‘Ghana Card Number at Birth’ can help resolve identity challenges

 In July last year, the Vice President of the coun­try, Alhaji Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, announced that all was set for the issuance of National Identification numbers, better known as Ghana Card numbers, to newborn babies.

Yesterday, Dr Bawumia launched the initiative dubbed ‘Ghana Card Number at Birth’ in Accra to seal the promise.

The ‘Ghana Card Number at Birth’ is planned such that every mother has to register her delivery at health facilities regardless of her location or socioeconomic status.

Specifically, the newborn’s records are captured in the District Health Information System (DHIS) e-tracker at the health facility and the no­tification sent to the Birth and Death Registry (BDR) system.

The BDR system then is­sues a birth registration num­ber, which it sends back to the e-tracker and light wave at the hospitals to be integrated.

The good news is that the Ministry of Health, the BDR and the National Identifi­cation Authority (NIA) are among the partners in the whole system, which helps to make the integration of the child’s records easy.

The initiative must be hailed because in the first place, it is going to help resolve challeng­es with proof of Ghanaian citizenship.

Hitherto there have been accusations against certain people for fraudulently acquir­ing Ghanaian citizenship in order to enjoy certain privi­leges and rights reserved for Ghanaians such as getting a Ghanaian passport or a voter’s identification (ID) card to vote in elections in the country.

We think that now that the NIA is going to register children aged zero; and also those aged six to 15 years in schools, for example, the country can give itself at most six years from the time of im­plementing the initiative to be in the best position to resolve citizenship issues concerning young children.

This means in 18 years, when the children born now have become adults, there cannot be any ‘infiltrators’ coming in to falsely acquire the country’s voter’s ID card for example.

Besides, we agree that the system can help in easily reuniting trafficked children with the families, thereby con­tributing positively to the fight against child trafficking.

We also think it can help in reconnecting missing children with their families.

Furthermore, the system will eventually help to stop the dishonesty associated with factors that go into building one’s identity such as age, name, parents, and hometown.

There is the rare case of the Irish twins phenomenon in which two siblings believed to be twins are born months apart in the same year or two different years in which case they would have different birthdays.

However, it is a serious matter when in this country some people can forge their dates of birth and become even younger than their junior or kid siblings or be older than their elder siblings, depending on what the forgery is meant for.

There are, for example, cases where the same person has a number of sources of identification such as pass­ports with the same name but different dates of birth.

Sometimes too, they do so with the picture of the same person but with different names.

All the situations are an indication that the person is involved in some crime.

Therefore, the ‘Ghana Card Number at Birth’ can also help in fighting crime.