The nation was on the verge of losing some GH 112 million cedis at the National Service Scheme this year alone. Some 14 thousand ghost names which was spotted on the list of National Service Personnel for the 2021/2022 service year was going to trigger this leakage. But the timely intervention of the current Executive Director, Hon. Osei Assibey Antwi and his management has served the situation.
This came up yesterday when the Vice President Alhaji Dr. Muhamudu Bawumia paid a surprise familiarization visit to the headquarters of the National Service Scheme.
The Executive Director of the Scheme, Hon. Osei Assibey Antwi upon assumption of office in September 2021 introduced an artificial intelligence security feature known as the metric app with the sole aim of speeding up national service registration process and to also eliminate impersonation.
This app scans faces of prospective service persons and matches them with their Ghana card for authentication and validation. Though 113,254 people had enrolled for national service, some 14 thousand out of this figure could not be verified and registered. Without this app, these people would have gone through registration and paid monthly service allowance though they may not exist. They were blocked at the gate so could not get the chance to even enter and get registered.
The country would have spent GH112 million to pay the allowances of those unqualified persons by the end of the service year.
The Vice-president, express shock at the revelation. He was however impressed with management of the scheme for deploying relevant technology to protect the public purse.
“I will like to congratulate you on your digitalization drive which has proven to be very effective because so far, you and your partners are saving this country from wasting over a Ghc112 million this year.
"This achievement is massive by any stretch because if we replicate this in ten institutions, we are talking of saving the country almost a billion cedis; you can understand why it is so important to link the pay roll with the Ghana Card which in your case has chased 14,027 people away,” he said.
Dr Bawumia noted that digitizing the greater portion of the economy was the surest way to enable government to achieve its quest to protect the public purse.
He further commended the management of the NSS for creating new initiatives to develop the competences of national service persons to be productive and gainfully employed after their service.
He pledged to support the Scheme in any manner that would be useful to achieve its intended goals.
“You have an outside the box thinking and I think this is how we all should go, so you can be assured of a 150 per cent support from my office to advocate for you and also enable you to actualize all these initiatives because at last, the country will benefit more from the skills you have impacted them”, he said.
