…BNI, National security investigate
The National Service Secretariat says it has detected that a total of 260 people have been impersonated on the scheme and have therefore been blocked by the system to allow for investigations.
In total, 604 people who registered onto the National Service Scheme (NSS) during the 2017/18 academic year had not been posted because their data had various forms of irregularities, which include alleged impersonation.
A communique available to the Goldstreet Business, written to the Minister for National Security stated an alleged issuance of pin-codes to unqualified graduates from the University of Education [Winneba] and some tertiary institutions in the Northern Region.
Speaking to the Goldstreet Business, the Executive Director of NSS, Mr. Mustapha Ussif said the secretariat has instituted an interrelated networking system which connects the database of NSS to the central database of the state to check and deal with impersonation.
Mr. Ussif mentioned that the moment NSS registration is done with a valid national ID, it automatically pulls out the details of the person from the central database system. He noted that the pulled-data must tally with the person’s national ID number.
The central database he said, included Driver Vehicle and Licensing Authority (DVLA), Social Security and National Insurance Trust, (SSNIT), Passport Office and the Electoral Commission (EC).
“We have 260 people impersonated. These people have not been able to report to our registration centre to register because systems are in place that will check them. NSS had therefore detected and blocked them”, he said.
According to him, his outfit has already written to the National Security and the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) to investigate the matter; expecting those found culpable of the crime be prosecuted.
Mr. Ussif noted that his outfit has already furnished the two state investigative bodies with all reliable data to enable them carry out with their investigations as quickly as possible.
Corruption/ impersonation
In their quest to curtail another reoccurrence of a scandal that hit the scheme in 2014, Mr. Ussif noted that adequate measures have been put in place by the secretariat to prevent corruption to reoccur.
He said that apart from the monthly return form which indicates the availability of a person at a respective workplace, the secretariat had also introduced QR Code on all the engagement letters of service personnel aimed at detecting impersonation and dealing with it.
He added that during the final registration process, the moment the appointment letter of a service personnel is scanned, all relevant details will pop up on a screen.
The Goldstreet Business was taken through the registration procedure and how the NSS network system works; stressing that if someone has been impersonated, the person cannot proceed to the final registration centre because of a QR code that will detect the genuine nature of a person’s registration.
Asked whether the recent enrolment by some supposed “scammers” who used details of teachers on study leave at the University of Education, Winneba, Kumasi Campus to register onto the scheme, the Executive Director noted that the database of the secretariat has not been compromised.
“Those that our system has detected for various anomalies, we would not post them until they come forward to verify that they are genuine service personnel”, the Executive Director said.
Background
The corruption scandal which implicated a total number of 27 district directors of the NSS is still pending in court. They were alleged to have played a major role in the Ghc7.9 million financial rot which hit the scheme in 2014.
By Dundas Whigham