Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta has announced in the 2018 budget that 4,000 National Service Personnel (NSP) will be engaged to emboss the digital addresses on properties across the country.
“In 2018, government through Ghana Post will develop postal codes to feed into the National Identification System. About 4,000 National Service Personnel will be engaged to emboss digital addresses on all landed properties nationwide. Ghana Post will be established as the preferred government agency for address verification,” he said.
The GhanaPostGPS was launched by President Akufo-Addo in October 2017 and it is a national addressing system which divides Ghana into grids of 5m x 5m squares and assigns each one a unique address.
The President said at the launch that the App marks the era of a new dawn.
“Today marks the end of an era and the beginning of a new one. We are launching a solution to our problems because it’s a trustworthy database of addresses.”
He added that the new addressing system will enhance the services of the law enforcement agencies, health sector and fire services.
“Law enforcement agencies can easily assess addresses more effectively in order to deal with crime. Health, fire and ambulance services can effectively locate property locations in order to save lives at a faster rate,” he said.
The system is location-based and it is expected to provide an effective means of providing an address to every location and place in the country, including undeveloped parcels of land, using an information technology application (app).
The app will generate a unique code for every property or location in Ghana with the use of the Global Positioning System (GPS) technology.
A national address registry will be imbedded in the system to enable individuals to validate their home and business addresses for easy direction and identification.
Deputy Minister of Information, George Andah has also stated that the GhanaPostGPS will soon be developed to be accessed in offline mode.
“In localising the solution, we have thought through the online version and we are looking at a solution where people can use USSD and SMS to request for their address.
Within the next couple of days, the Ghana Post offices or service centres will have these offline mode devices and if you want to generate your digital address and you go there, they can help you,” he told the media.
By Dziedzom Atoklo l thebftonline.com l Ghana
