The National Service Authority (NSA) is cracking down on fraud, announcing a new “No Ghana Card, No Service” policy effective immediately.
The NSA Director-General, Felix Gyamfi, has declared that prospective graduates lacking a valid Ghana Card will be barred from registering for national service.
This policy, Gyamfi explained at a press conference on Thursday, February 13, 2025, is a key component of the NSA’s enhanced efforts to eliminate ghost names from its payroll.
“If you do not have a valid Ghana Card ID, you will not be allowed into our system,” Gyamfi stated emphatically. “If you are a prospective graduate and you do not have a valid Ghana Card to register, you will not be allowed to do national service. So, these are some of the pathways to take away the Ghost names that I have actually discussed.”
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The NSA is also tightening its accreditation requirements for tertiary institutions. Gyamfi cautioned that the Authority will only work with universities and colleges of education with valid and intact accreditations.
“So far, we have found out that over 20 Colleges of Education have expired accreditations from the Ghana Tertiary Education,” he revealed.
“I am using this channel to reach out to the Colleges of Education that they should use the one-week ahead of us, including the grace of Friday and the week ahead of us, to make sure that their accreditations are restored; otherwise, we will not allow their graduates to register,” he added.
These stringent measures come in the wake of the discovery of over 81,885 suspected ghost names on the NSA payroll, uncovered after a recent headcount of active National Service personnel.
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This headcount was initiated by the Minister for Finance as a prerequisite for clearing outstanding allowance arrears dating back to August 2024.
The National Investigations Bureau (NIB) is currently investigating how these fraudulent entries were created under the previous administration.
Gyamfi attributed the ghost names scandal to a failure of leadership within the NSA. He stated that the previous management failed to implement checks and policies designed to prevent such fraudulent activities.
“This was a leadership problem,” Gyamfi lamented. “This was a situation where the checks that were put in place to save the taxpayers’ money were supposed to have kicked in, and they didn’t kick in.”