The Volta Regional Director of the National Service Scheme (NSS) , Ambrose Entsiwah Junior, has affirmed the success of the introduction of the facial recognition Metric Application into the Scheme’s registration process at the various registration centers.
The program, the first of its sort in the Scheme’s operations, was created specifically to confirm the identification of National Service Personnel using a face recognition system and the Ghana card, according to him.
This became necessary after increased cases of National Identity theft was being recorded on the system in 2020. There was the need to perform a 3-way match between the identities provided, university information, and the actual user personnel being enrolled.
As a result, the program compares the facial features of the images from the National ID, the photos uploaded during registration, and the actual photos obtained during regional registration.
Speaking in an interview, Entsiwah Jnr Highlighted the effectiveness of the Metric Application, the Volta Regional Director said the Metric Application identified some 14,406 national service personnel who were blocked by the system.
As a consequence, the nation was able to save about GH112 million that, absent the usage of the Metric Application, would have gone into the wrong hands. By keeping the figures, the Scheme has so safeguarded the public coffers.
Almost a year after the blockade, some critics would want to be clear about the state of the “on hold” numbers. “Checks from our data show that 13,179 out of the figure have been put on hold for failed authentication, while 219 service personnel are still on hold for Bio-Metric issues.”
“Service personnel, who have successfully been cleared and posted, are 147, while 476 service personnel have also had their registration verified and are awaiting posting. In all, 382 of the number have been accepted by user agencies and approved by the regions, while only three service personnel have so far been rejected by user agencies,” he added.