As a result of the integration of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) card into the Ghana card, the state pension body no longer has to spend money on printing pension cards for beneficiary members, Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia has noted.

Speaking at the Civil Service Awards ceremony held in Accra on 29 July 2022, Dr Bawumia said: “Today, we’ve integrated the Ghana card also with the SSNIT card and, so, SSNIT no longer has to print SSNIT cards again”.

“They are saving close to $30 million every year now because they only need the Ghana card”, he explained.

Apart from the SSNIT-card integration, Dr Bwaumia also said: “We’ve integrated it [Ghana card] with the NHIS [National Health Insurance Scheme] card”.

As a result, he said the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) “is not going to print separate NHIS cards again because they have the Ghana card and the Ghana card, the number, is going to work as your NHIS number; the number is your SSNIT number, the number is your tax identification number, and so on”.

“So, we are integrating databases and making a lot of savings”, Dr Bawumia pointed out.

Also, he said: “Some people die and you cannot recognise who they are. They have no identification and [in] those sorts of tragic cases, if they are registered on the national identification system, they can easily be identified”.

Speaking at the launch of two new high-level information technology programmes at the Accra Business School on Thursday, 14 July 2022, Dr Bawumia said he would prefer the Ghana card to 1,000 interchanges any day because the former will transform Ghana in the long-term.

“Today, we have 16 million Ghanaians with unique identities and that is a major transformation. A lot of people, sometimes, don’t even appreciate what the impact of the Ghana card is but if you gave 1,000 interchanges and the Ghana card, I will choose the Ghana card because it has more impact on development,” he stated.

The Ghana card is a valid verification document issued by the National Identification Authority (NIA) to Ghanaians and resident foreign nationals living everywhere for the purpose of identification.

The card bears personal information about the individuals whose identity can be verified at all times. The NIA National Identity System utilises three types of biometric technology for identification purposes.

These are the fingerprints unique to each individual in the form of digitised templates, and facial templates in the form of a digitised colour photo of the cardholder and the iris.

The card contains basic identification information including a photograph of the cardholder, along with a name, date of birth, height, and a personal identification number that has been randomly generated and assigned to the holder and has an expiry date.