Dr. Bawumia starts the process of registering cured lepers for the Ghana Card.

Lepers who have been healed are now being added to the identification register by the National Identification Authority.

The Vice-President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, started the exercise, which started yesterday at the Weija Leprosarium in the Greater Accra Region, where it is anticipated to affect 20 to 50 persons.

The Ankaful Leprosarium in the Central Region and Kokofu in the Ashanti Region will later be included in the exercise.

In due order, further cured lepers in the Volta Region’s Ho, the Northern Region’s Nkanchina, and the Upper West Region’s Wa would also be registered.

Lepers, some of whom have lost their fingers to leprosy, will have their faces, irises, and ears captured during the verification process.

Relevance

The Ghana Card, according to Dr. Bawumia, is a crucial document that all residents should get in order to do business and engage in other activities.

“Since we don’t want anyone to feel excluded, we’re talking about including everyone.

We want to ensure that the community of cured lepers as a whole is included, and this is happening in Weija,” he stated.

Dr. Bawumia, who serves as the patron of the Lepers Aid Committee, added that as lepers are among the most marginalized and vulnerable members of society, inclusion is necessary.

Regarding the law governing the use of the Ghana Card, the Vice-President stated that it established the requirements for every citizen to obtain the card and listed 17 uses for it.

According to the data that was accessible, 120 million card verifications have been performed as of this writing. Bawumia

Social inclusion

Prof. Kenneth Agyeman Attafuah, the NIA’s executive secretary, described the project as a social, economic, and political inclusion exercise.

He said that 17.4 million persons, or those who were 15 years of age and older, had already been added to the national identity registry by the NIA.

Out of the 31 million individuals who have not been registered, only roughly 2.5 million are over the age of 15.

Our current burning ambition, according to Prof. Attafuah, is to have blank cards so that we can register the 2.5 million people in two to three months with the help of the NIA workers.

He added that his organization has reached an agreement to register children from birth to age six with the Ministry of Health, the Ghana Health Service, and the Registrar of Births and Deaths Registry.

In addition, Prof. Attafuah stated that the authority would register Ghanaians living abroad, pending funding.

Appreciation

Rev. Father Andrew Campbell, the chairman of the Lepers Aid Committee, thanked Dr. Bawumia for all of his assistance in curing lepers around the nation.

However, he argued that cured lepers needed more than the GH 30 per month to lead respectable lives and urged lawmakers to boost the feeding stipend for them.

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