Ken Agyapong is ignorant - Prof Attafuah jabs

e annan

June 18, 2018 1:35 PM

“The allegations and commentaries by the honourable Member of Parliament are ill-informed. They issue from a well-meaning position of ignorance", Attafuah said on Joy FM.

The Executive Secretary of the National Identification Authority,

Professor Attafuah said the vociferous NPP lacks the knowledge into the processes of the issuance of the cards.

He was made these comments as a response to claims by Kennedy Agyapong that expenditure for the project is ridiculous and he could have got the cards done for just $50m.

"$50 million is not a realistic amount… and we are not producing sandpaper laminated cards. We are producing the topmost range of ID cards in the world that will take this country into the future,” he added.

Kennedy Agyapong said he bid the contract with some Indian firm which would have cost the nation $50m instead of the $1.5b being quoted as the cost of the project.

Prof Attafuah explained that it was impossible, with the kind of card Ghana wanted to produce, to adopt the system a company Mr Agyapong had interest in, proferred.

“Somebody just came and said I can do it for 50 [million dollars]. They did not provide any details, no specifications, nothing", he said.

He said the technical committee established by the Vice President to advice government looked at NIA’s capacity vis a vis that of its private partners and pronounced their own verdict which informed government’s decision on the issue.In Prof Attafuah's view, so advanced is Ghana’s card that the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) in the United States of America at a conference for biometric ID card users, concluded after learning about Ghana’s card that ”we have something far superior.”

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