Member of Parliament for Tolon Constituency, Habib Iddrisu, says government is committed to devoting resources to the National Identification Authority (NIA).

His comment comes on the back of the Electoral Commission’s decision to use the Ghana Card as the sole document for the 2024 voters’ register.

The EC’s decision has been met with ire from both the Minority in Parliament and the general public who argue that many Ghanaians are yet to be issued their cards months after registration.

While 17 million cards have already been issued, according to the NIA boss, 2.5 million cards are yet to be printed and distributed.

Professor Attafuah, speaking on JoyNews’ Newsfile noted that though the NIA is equipped enough to print out the cards in record time, financial difficulties are impeding their progress.

“Since about August of last year, we have experienced financial constraints in the system and it created a situation where even though we have 3.5 million stock of cards in a bonded warehouse, we are unable to assess the cards because of financial difficulty….,” he explained.

Prof Attafuah added that the private partner in the arrangement is owed a considerable amount of money hence the refusal to release the Ghana Cards to the NIA.

To this, Habib Iddrisu responded that the “government is making a lot of effort to enable NIA complete the job. The question we need to ask ourselves is whether government is committed and will release the funds to NIA? Whether NIA has the personnel to be able to do it? Whether NIA still has the time to be able to complete it?”

He is optimistic the government will be able to fulfill its part in the registration process to enable the NIA complete their job before the close of voters registration period.

Meanwhile the NIA boss says government on Friday has cleared some of the debt, therefore NIA is hopeful that “going into next week, cards will be released.

“Now when cards are released, 541,521 cards can be printed in less than two weeks,” he assured.