The Minority in Parliament has criticised the National Health Insurance Authority’s (NHIA) proposal to allocate GH₵245 million for the procurement of Ghana Cards for children aged six to 14.

According to the NHIA, supplying these cards to children in this age range would eliminate the need for separate printing of National Health Insurance cards for them.

However, speaking during a parliamentary session on Friday, March 22, the former Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu, condemned the decision as reckless.

He argued that the NHIA's primary responsibility should be to settle claims rather than diverting funds to purchase Ghana Cards.

Mr Iddrisu stated that the state is already engaged in acquiring Ghana Cards and questioned the logic behind the NHIA's decision to duplicate efforts and spend additional funds on data procurement.

“We need more answers from the National Identification Authority and the Health Insurance. I do not think that this State's resources is being spent well,” Mr Iddrisu said.

The Minority Chief Whip, Kwame Governs Agbodza, called for a parliamentary audit into what he called the NHIA's significant spending on ICT-related expenses.

He expressed concern over the NHIA allocating nearly one billion Ghana cedis towards ICT-related projects, listing various expenditures such as the claims processing centre, biometric ID cards authentication system, management information system, telecare service platform, and claims data capture.

Mr Agbodza emphasised that despite requests for an independent audit of the NHIS system, the authority has failed to comply.

“Mr Speaker, even the Ministry of Communication, how much money do they spend on ICT and other things? Mr Speaker, this is not the first time we requested that the NHIS should conduct an independent audit of the system and report to Parliament.

“As we speak, they have failed to do the audit and furnish Parliament so we are saying Parliament should institute its own audit into this,” he said.