Five hundred thousand Ghanaians have, so far, been issued with a national identification card also known as the Ghana Card by the National Identification Authority (NIA), Vice-President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has said.

The national ID card, according to the government, would help to modernise and formalise the Ghanaian economy through the establishment of a credible national database.

Some selected institutions and state agencies including the Presidency, Parliament and the Judicial Service were registered and issued with the cards from the start of the exercise in May 2018 but not without complaints of the slow nature of the process.

Speaking at a town hall meeting in Accra on Wednesday, April 3, 2019, Dr Bawumia said: “The introduction of the national ID card is a game changer despite its challenges. So far, about 500,000 cards have been issued and we’ve had the pilots take place at Adentan and Madina. We expect the mass issuance to commence at the end of April”.

The new ID card will phase out the one previously issued in the John Agyekum Kufuor era.