The National Service Secretariat says it is reviewing the processes for its annual registration and recruitment of personnel for National Service in order to reduce the frequency of human contact in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Management of the National Service Scheme (NSS) on 24 April 2020, released for registration a total of 111,613 PIN Codes for eligible Ghanaian final year students from all accredited tertiary institutions in the country to enable them enroll to do their mandatory national service for the 2020/2021 service year.

The online registration process is usually concluded with a validation process which sometimes witnesses the flooding of regional and district NSS centers with scores of applicants which creates long queues and congestions at the various centres. This situation has raised concerns about public safety in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

But the Deputy Executive Director of the NSS Dr Gifty Oware Aboagye speaking to Class News’ Blessed Sogah in an interview said: “We’re planning so much with our IT team to make sure that regular and other ways are used for their registration, when they come to stay at any particular place, because of the social distancing, we making sure that all the protocols are observed”.

Dr Oware further explained that electronic money transaction and other policies already being rolled out is targeted at ensuring the safety of applicants.

“They’re doing more of the mobile money in terms of their registration than they even go to the bank that is the ADB to pay their GHS40 to get themselves registered so you do not need to go through a long process of the registration again so these are the things in place for them so there’s no queuing and other long stuff” she said.