An Accra High Court has placed an interim injunction on the National Identification Authority’s (NIA) mass registration exercise in the Eastern Region.
According to the court presided over by Justice Daniel Mensah, it had taken judicial notice of the president’s directive banning all social gatherings and the health risk the Ghana Card registration poses.
The decision of the court was as a result of an interim injunction application brought against the NIA’s Ghana Card registration by two people who reside in the Eastern Region.
The applicants argued that the registration by NIA posed some serious health risks for registrants of which the court had to intervene.
On its part, the NIA told the court that it had to continue the registration exercise in other not to disenfranchise people who reside in the Eastern Region due to the Legislative Instrument presented to Parliament by the Electoral Commission which seeks to make the Ghana card and passport, the two major means of getting onto the new voters’ register.
The plaintiffs, Kevow Mark-Oliver and Emmanuel Akumatey Okrah argued in their writ that the continuous registration and issuance of the Ghana card in the Eastern Region has a strong tendency in “aggravating the spread of the coronavirus”.
They among other things sought an interlocutory injunction restraining the NIA from continuing with the exercise until the coronavirus has been eliminated.
But following the interlocutory injunction application filed at the High Court restraining the NIA from continuing with the registration exercise, the Authority subsequently suspended the Ghana Card registration exercise in the Eastern Region.
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The exercise was suspended “pending the final determination of the application,” the NIA noted in a statement.
Meanwhile, the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), for example, said the continuation of the registration was a breach of international and regional human rights instruments.
CHRAJ in a statement also said the NIA’s actions were a disregard of the existing World Health Organization (WHO) precautionary measures aimed at containing and combating the novel coronavirus.
