Gov’t workers, students rush for NHIS biometric registration

Workers in government department and agencies, as well as students in the Asante Mampong Municipality, dash to register National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) biometric exercise, forcing officials to extend work period to include the weekends.

Officials at the National Insurance Scheme say they now start work from 0500 hours and sometimes close after 2000 hours, to take care of social groups, government workers and students, during Saturdays and Sundays due to their busy schedules during the week days.

The Social Security and National Insurance, Mampong Municipal Assembly and the Sekyere Central District Education workers, as well as students in the second cycle institutions and three communities have been registered, Mr. Enoch Oko Otoo, Municipal Scheme Manager told the GNA in an interview in Mampong.

He said the enormity of pressure and tendency of people hurrying to register, forced management to set aside the weekends to register those who are busy during week days.

He said: “We are now registering students from the senior high schools, and it is now the turn of Amaniampong Senior High School.”

He said the scheme is arranging with the tertiary institutions and the health workers for registration, as well as the Department of Social Welfare to register beneficiaries of the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme, and indigents for free.

Mr. Otoo intimated that with those arrangements put in place, the municipal scheme is hoping to capture 60,000 active members by the close of the year.

He dismissed allegations that the National Health Insurance System was collapsing, and questioned: “if it is collapsing why the mad rush to register.”

Mr. Kodua Opoku, Management Information Systems Officer of the Scheme, raised concern over the application network, which he said, did not allow the registration process to speed up and capture many persons within a short time as expected.

“The system is slow, it sometimes takes about 20 minutes, instead of the original targeted period of 10 minutes to capture an adult,” he said.

The Mampong Municipality is allocated with four registration machines, and is expected to register 160 persons per day, however, officials say they are able to capture about 216 persons each day.

Mr. Otoo said, in spite of the down time and delay of the network, the Municipality exceeds its target of 40 entries for each machine per day, hitting 54 entries per machine per day, as the October 31 available records indicate.