Registrar-General shutdown: Government losing GHC500,000 daily

Mrs Jemima Mamaa Oware, the Registrar-General, says government is losing between GHS 300,000 to GHS 500,000 daily as revenue as a result of the temporary shutdown of the department’s systems.

This is due to an industrial strike action by workers of their main service provider, GCNet, which has a private partnership agreement with the Government since 2011.

GCnet is the developer and administrator of an electronic system known as E-Registrar for the Registrar-General’s Department (RGD) which gives them all the electronic registrations carried out throughout their offices.

She said when RGD found out that it could not to access its systems, it communicated with management and workers of GCNet and it turned out that the workers had withdrawn their services in solidarity with laid off staff whose redundancy package had not been paid.

This, she said, had had an impact on their work since GCNet managed their electronic systems and that other services such as Industrial Property Right, marriages and estates had also been affected.

“It is a sad day for RGD and all our offices since we are not working and have not been able to make payments for any of our services because our services are linked up to this electronic system. We have not taken any revenue since last week Friday,” she added.

The Registrar-General expressed worry that the shutdown would impact negatively on the business community and the population as a whole since many transactions could not be done.

“We are not able to process transactions and we were registering as many as 200 companies a day but now since last week Friday we have absolutely nothing to do,” she said.

She called on Government and the Ministry of Finance to intervene and find solutions to this challenge.

She apologized to the general public for any inconvenience caused and said management was working around the clock to get the challenge resolved.

Clients would be informed when their services resumed, she said.

Meanwhile, GCNet Staff Welfare Association had communicated to Management its decision to resume the suspended strike with immediate effect in accordance with section 159 of the Labour Act withdrawing all support services including services provided by some redundant staff.