Head of Department of Corporate Affairs at the National Identification Authority (NIA) has disclosed that the long queues recorded at the various Ghana Card registration centres will ease by the end of October.

Mr Abdul-Ganiyu said this on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show on Tuesday as part of discussions on challenges faced by applicants for the Ghana Card.

He explained that the long queues have been caused by the quest to secure the Ghana Card for use as a requirement for reregistration of SIM cards.

“Everyone uses a sim card. So you now have that population who have not yet registered going out, and these are the long queues that we are currently observing at registration centres”.

He said the NIA has put measures in place to operate an office in all districts in the country. Mr Abdul-Ganiyu noted that once these offices become operational, the queues should ease.

“As an institution, that has been created, established for purposes of identity management, we should become a fully-fledged national institution where we have presence across all regions and across all districts of our country. So that people do not have to hustle in terms of going out to register. So we’re looking forward to doing that by end of October, when all the district and regional offices would have been established.”

“All other persons who have registered over the period, and have still not gotten their card, would have to wait until the regional and district offices are operational, then we’d be able to issue. We are looking at towards the end of October. So early November, all the offices should have been opened. We’re talking about 275 of them, in addition to 16 regional offices. If you happen to have registered in a particular district, that is where we would take your cards to,” Mr. Abudu Abdul-Ganiyu explained.

Despite these long queues, he urged citizens who have not yet registered for the Ghana Card to do so.