President John Dramani Mahama yesterday launched the National Democratic Congress (NDC) biometric membership card and described it as a turning point in the party's forward march.
He said a major mark of a political party that meant business in the modern day was to introduce ICT in its operations, and added that the NDC had shown the way as the most modern party in Ghana.
The inauguration coincided with the National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting of the party in Accra.
The biometric membership card, which would provide proper identification and a database for members, has unique features which the party leaders hoped would bring immense sanity into the running of the party
Party leaders said apart from the National Identification card, the NDC membership card was the most sophisticated in the country.
Local content
Mr Mahama said the fact that the card was produced locally was a testimony of the party's belief in the can-do spirit of the Ghanaian.
"This is a home-grown exercise and I commend the party leadership and the committee that worked on the production," he said.
Mr Mahama stated that how political parties were run had a direct bearing on the democratic process.
He said party members would be required to pay "a small fee" to recover the cost of the cards.
The introduction of the cards, Mr Mahama said, meant that all the party's offices would be equipped with computers to access information from the database.
General Secretary
Giving a historical background to the biometric card, the General Secretary of the party, Mr Johnson Asiedu-Nketiah, said the decision was mooted during the last national delegates congress of the party in Tamale.
It was among four projects which the elected national executive decided to undertake.
The others included the acquisition of a new national headquarters, the establishment of a party school and the development of an organisation manual for the training of party members.
Mr Asiedu-Nketiah said progress had been made in the other three projects.
The general secretary disclosed that registration of members for the cards had started in eight regions.
He said 44,000 of the membership cards had already been printed for the Western Region and out of the number, 18,000 had been acquired.
