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Kenneth Agyemang Attafuah is Executive Secretary of the National Identification Authority (NIA).
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A decision of a high court in Accra signaling ANI to make the address of GhanaPostGPS mandatory to obtain the Ghana Card is on appeal.
The plaintiff, Mr. Francis Arthur, who had engaged in 2018 lawsuits against the National Identification Authority for making mandatory the GhanaPostGPS digital address code for the acquisition of Ghana Card , appealed the decision of Judge Gifty Agyei Addo, High Representative of Accra. Judge of the court.
It will be remembered that the NIA was turning away from its registration centers with tons of Ghanaians, who could not provide a GhanaPostGPS digital address code. According to Mr. Arthur, a lawyer, this practice is contrary to the 2008 National Identity Register Act (Law No. 750) as amended by the 2017 National Identity Register Act. (amended) (Law No. 950).
The law cites up to 31 different personal information that the NIA registry should contain. This includes SSNIT, tax identification, pbadport, driver's license, phone, NHIS, voter numbers. It also includes the residential address, the post office address, the email address, as well as the controversial GhanaPostGPS address code.
However, Mr. Arthur's argument is that a person does not need to provide each of the 31 information before being allowed to register on the Ghana Card. According to him, this is due to the fact that some information is only alternatives. In particular, it states that a person who provides a reliable residential address should not be denied registration simply because they could not provide the GhanaPostGPS address code.
He also claims that generating a GhanaPostGPS address code requires a smart phone, reliable Internet service and basic computer skills, all of which are out of reach of millions of Ghanaians. In this regard, he claims that the GhanaPostGPS address code requirement is discriminatory in that it indirectly excludes the poor.
However, in a terse judgment rendered on March 28, 2019, Her Ladyship insists that the use of "must" in the law means that anyone who fails to provide the 31 pieces of information must be denied.
"Section 4 of Law No. 750 as amended by Law No. 950," writes the learned judge, "states the required information in the following manner …" (listing the 31 items of information). "I see that the wording of section 4 is mandatory, without excluding the information required," she concluded.
However, during an interview in his office in Airport Hills, Accra, lawyer lawyer Arthur, Judge Srem-Sai, explained that "every lawyer knows that the use of "must" in legislation does not always include a mandatory import. "
"It is therefore unusually puzzling that Ms. Ladyship can, even in the face of an absurd result, insist that the use of" must "in the law means that every Ghanaian must provide all the details cumulatively," said Mr. Srem-Sai. .
Asked what he thinks of the whole judgment, Mr. Srem-Sai replied that the judgment "is clearly a case where a learned judge misunderstands the legal issues presented to him".
In the meantime, the Applicant, Mr. Arthur, alluded to his intention to request an audit of the NIA Registry to determine if all registrants so far were able to provide the details.
"If this is not the case, then the NIA must respond to its adage, which obviously thinks that the" must "used in the law makes the provision of the digital address code mandatory," he added.
The Court of Appeal generally takes no less than four months to adjudicate an appeal of this nature.
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