Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia has said that Ghana’s national ID Card (Ghana Card) will soon become an electronic passport for all bearers, in what critics describe as an unrealistic plan typical of the Vice President.
“It is not widely known that the Ghanacard is also an electronic passport (e-passport) that contains the biometric information that can be used to authenticate the identity of travelers,” Dr. Bawumia said.
“We have been working with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) this year to globally activate the e-passport function of the Ghanacard and I am happy to announce that on 13th October 2021, Ghana officially became the 79th member of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Public Key Directory (PKD) community. The ICAO Public Key Directory (PKD) is a central repository for exchanging the information required to authenticate e-passports.”
He made the claims while delivering a public lecture at the Ashesi University in Accra.
But Dr. Bawumia is a controversial figure with his digital claims and had been at the center of a scandal in respect of the Ghana GPS address system after he awarded a Ghc15million contract to a regime amigo for the system even though that same was offered by Google for free.
A Street-naming program that the Akufo-Addo government inherited from the erstwhile Mahama government has also been embroiled in controversy after the Vice President reportedly awarded contracts to a Chinese company under shady circumstances.
The Chinese company has since been preferring strange names to Ghanaian streets that have sparked anger.