Bawumia optimistic digitalisation will prevent fraudulent activities and losses
The Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, is very optimistic about getting rid of fraudsters in public institutions through government’s digitalisation drive.
Dr. Bawumia said the digitalisation drive has helped the National Service Scheme save the country millions of cedis from fraud.
Ghost names and payments of allowances to personnel who do not exist have been reduced due to reliance on digitalisation drive, Dr. Bawumia said.
Speaking at a meeting with management of the National Service Scheme—NSS on Monday, January 31, 2022, after paying a surprise visit to their office, Dr. Bawumia said more will be done to rid the public service of fraudsters.
He said the NSS were able to achieve this due to the introduction of Metric App, which combines facial recognition technology and identity card checks for verification and validation.
“The digitalisation has proven to be very effective, you and your partners are saving this country so far about GH¢112 million. That is massive, that is really massive, and this is just one institution. Now, if you replicate this in about 10 institutions, you are talking about almost a billion and what about the whole public sector?”he quizzed.
“You can understand why we think it is so important to link payroll with the Ghana card, which is essentially part of the verification you have done and that has chased 14,000 people away because they were getting money which they shouldn’t have been getting, and I think digitalisation has been able to expose them. So I am very excited and thankful for what you are doing, you are thinking outside the box.”
The Vice President encouraged institutions in the public sector to incorporate technology into their operations.
According to him, by incorporating this into other public institutions, the country will be able to save an enormous amount of money.
Source: Citinewsroom
