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The National
Identification Authority (NIA) has justified why it continued with the mass
registration exercise in the Eastern Region despite the confirmed coronavirus
cases in the country.
This comes after two Ghanaian citizens filed a
motion for an interlocutory injunction to be placed on the NIA’s ongoing Ghana
Card registration exercise.
According to the NIA, the exercise goes contrary
to the announcement of a ban on public gatherings by the President.
But the NIA in a defense filed in response to a
suit brought against the authority said the NIA’s work falls under the category
of businesses that were permitted to continue to operate but with adequate precautionary
measures.
“Much as the President directed that all
public gatherings should be suspended, in the same speech Sunday, 15th March
2020, the President expressly preserved the continued operation of businesses
and other workplaces subject to the observance of prescribed social distancing
between patrons and staff”
“The effect of the President’s directive is
that manufacturing, industrial and service workplaces including the civil
service and service in other organs of government, local market, supermarket,
shopping mall, restaurant, security services, and other essential services
continue to function, but subject to the strict practice of prescribed social
distancing,” it said.
It argued that their work is part of public
services and as such the ban declared by the president last Sunday does not
include the Ghana card registration and the plaintiffs on that basis have no
case against the authority.
The authority added: “That the National
Identification Authority (NIA) is a statutory authority, part of the public
services of Government and performing services which were not proscribed or
outlawed by the letter and spirit of the directives of the President dated
Sunday, 15th March 2020.”
