“Youth who lied about age to vote in 2020 now paying the price”

The Deputy Director-General of Finance and Administration at the National Service Authority (NSA), Hon. Fuseini Donkor, has disclosed that many of the challenges currently faced by prospective national service personnel stem from false age declarations made during the 2020 Ghana Card registration exercise.

During an interview on Off The Lens on Onlinetimesgh’s YouTube channel, Hon. Donkor indicated that, several young people at the time inflated their ages to meet the 18-year voting threshold, a decision that has now backfired as the new national service registration system cross-checks and verifies Ghana Card data in real time.

“Most of them inflated their ages to get the Ghana Card, and that is what is now biting back at them. You realize that it’s widespread, especially those from the 2020 batch. Many were around 14 or 15 years but pushed it to 18 just to be able to vote.”

He explained that the new Central Management System (CMS) portal developed by the NSA was designed to prevent such discrepancies. The system, he said, integrates live biometric verification and geolocation tracking to ensure that the information on the Ghana Card matches data from tertiary institutions.

“This new system doesn’t allow you to proceed when you enter wrong data. It captures your live image, checks your biometrics, and compares it with what is on your Ghana Card before you can continue. If there’s a mismatch, it automatically blocks you,” he explained.

Hon. Donkor further revealed that the portal was developed “at zero cost” to the government through a collaborative effort between the National Identification Authority (NIA), the National Information Technology Agency (NITA), and the Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems Limited (GhIPSS).

“All the agencies that we needed to pay decided to do it for free because it was a government-to-government collaboration,” he said.

He encouraged students facing registration issues to verify and correct their Ghana Card details to avoid being locked out of the system.

Click the link below to watch the interview…