E-zwich can check alleged fraud at NSS
A plan to pay all National Service Scheme (NSS) allowance on e-zwich cards could have averted the fraud that is currently being investigated by the Bureau of National Investigation (BNI).
The biometric smart card would have prevented impersonation and the creation of ghost names if a pilot project that was initiated was extended to cover the entire country as it was intended.
Some officials of NSS have been arrested while the board of the service scheme has asked the entire management to proceed on leave with immediate effect with a few recalled.
This comes after it emerged that the scheme’s Director, Alhaji Imoro Alhassan, allegedly attempted to offer GH¢200,000 bribe to security officials investigating widespread corruption in the national service scheme.
Alhaji Alhassan reportedly paid GH¢100,000 in his attempt to silence investigators of the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) to conceal a GH¢7.9 million financial fraud at the scheme.
The investigations became necessary following reports that a total of GH¢7.9 million was paid to 22,612 non-existent national service persons in more than 100 districts in July 2014.
While the BNI continues with its investigation, it has emerged that a pilot project that began in 2010 and covered about 17 districts to pay NSS allowances on e-zwich cards has not been carried through. Instead, the number of districts covered under the pilot has reduced to four currently.
With the payment of allowances on e-zwich cards, it would have been impossible for officials to pay monies to a different account and access it later. This is because with the e-zwich biometric card, all fingers of a cardholder are scanned during enrolment and the templates stored on the client card.
When performing any transaction on the e-zwich device, whether on an ATM or a Point of Sale terminal, will demand the verification of the cardholder by comparing the fingerprint presented on the device scanner to any of those stored on the card.
When contacted, the Chief Executive Officer of Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems, Archie Hesse, confirmed that though the pilot programme was ongoing, it covered less districts than it was the case previously.
He said the decision to reduce the number of districts covered had nothing to do with GhIPSS since they were only service providers. He, however, said payment of salaries or allowances via the e-zwich card was one sure way to clean the government payroll.
Mr Hesse said the decision to pilot the payment of NSS allowances on e-zwich was partly to ensure that the monies went to the right persons. He said the NSS’s inability to expand the project to cover the entire nation had not been helpful.
He said GhIPSS had made various suggestions to the scheme which were yet to be carried out. He prayed that the payment of allowances on the biometric card would be revisited and expanded in order to ensure a clean and transparent payroll.
Asked about proposed plans to pay public sector workers’ salaries on the biometric card, Mr Hesse said GhIPSS was pursuing that with the Comptroller and Accountant General’s Department.
The GhIPSS CEO said government could make significant savings on payroll-associated waste and fraud if e-zwich was used to pay salaries. “By its biometric nature and the fact that it provides electronic audit trail of every transaction, makes it a great tool to fight the canker of ghost names”, he stressed.
Some people have complained about the difficulty in accessing e-zwich services, a factor that could be affecting its patronage. While admitting that some challenges do exist, Mr Hesse said following a directive by the Bank of Ghana, the banks were now compelled to offer e-zwich services at all their branches.
He added that since that directive, it had been significantly easy to access the service. He said GhIPSS, in collaboration with Ecobank and other banks, were converting existing ATMs to be able to accept e-zwich cards.
He also indicated that the current rollout of hybrid Point of Sales (POS) terminals had also increased the number of outlets to use the biometric card.
Mr Hesse said the e-zwich provided the country with a unique solution to addressing payroll fraud, and added that some private companies which were using it had uncovered fraud and made savings. He hoped the NSS would work quickly to extend the payment of allowances on the biometric card to the entire nation to save the country lots of money.
He mentioned that the payment of student loans on e-zwich was expanding year-on-year while government’s recent decision to pay beneficiaries of the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) on the biometric card on a pilot basis was moving on steadily.
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