‘Ghana’s Census To Go Digital Soon’

Vice President and flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) for the 2024 general election, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has indicated that Ghana will soon get regular updates of its population due to the foundations being laid in terms of digitalisation.

He said it will soon be unnecessary to conduct census every 10 years by sending enumerators out on the field across the country.

“Very soon and I mean, maybe within the next few years, our census will be almost digital because we will know how many people have died from birth and death, we know how many people are born.

“It will not be necessary to physically go and count anybody, because the data will be available, on a daily basis about the population at any point in time,” Dr. Bawumia explained.

Addressing the Clergy in Accra yesterday as part of his campaign tour of the Greater Accra Region, the Vice President said the government’s quest to digitalise the economy is gradually paying off.

No salaries to ‘ghost names’

Vice President Bawumia said linking all government workers to their Ghana Cards has saved the country from paying salaries to ‘ghost names.’

According to him, prior to the introduction of the Ghana Card, salaries were paid to individuals who did not earn them.

The NPP flagbearer stated that the initiative has been able to identify ghost names on the payroll and stopped the corrupt activities that usually occur.

“One of the areas that we have been able to really make progress is ghosts names. This is huge corruption that was taking place, because people were put on payroll without working, and other people will collect their salaries.

“So I said that the solution to this problem is to link every worker to their Ghana Card. Once you link every worker to their Ghana Card that means you link every worker’s fingerprint. And every fingerprint is unique. And we know ghosts don’t have fingerprint.

“Immediately we did that, the ghosts ran away, they ran away across. National service scheme alone, 44,000 ghost names ran away. The SSNIT pension scheme, 29,000 ghost names, national service we saved over GH¢400 million, SSNIT over GH¢300 million.

“Two institutions alone over GH¢700 million saved just by taking out the ghost names. So you can see the extent of the problem. And now we can say we’ve cleaned up the controller database,” he pointed out.