General News of Wednesday, 18 October 2017

Source: starrfmonline.com

Digital address will transform Ghana – Akufo-Addo

President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has encouraged every Ghanaian to take advantage of the National Digital Property Address system to improve their lives.

Speaking at the launch of the system in Accra Wednesday, President Akufo-Addo noted the digital property system will help transform the economy because of its multi-faceted benefits.

“With this new system, every property in Ghana will have an address and can be accounted for,” Akufo-Addo stated, adding the era when landmarks or food joints were used to give directions is over.

“With this new system, the location of the blue kiosk, the ‘waakye’ seller or the ‘koko’ seller will have an address,” the president stressed, noting that “the Property Addressing System also means that the ‘koko’ seller can now open a bank account.”

The digital address system, Akufo-Addo averred, will make access to financial service and credit facilities less cumbersome.

He added: “The Digital Address System also means that the ‘koko’ seller will be able to meet the basic requirement to access loan facilities from a bank.

“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.”

The president tasked the utility companies especially the Ghana Water Company Limited to take full advantage of the system since it will help them easily locate customers and boost revenue collection.

The location-based system will provide an effective means of addressing every location to facilitate the implementation of key government policies. The app will generate a unique code for every property or location in Ghana, using the Global Positioning System (GPS) technology. Vokacom, a Ghanaian Information Technology firm, designed the system at a cost of $2.5 million.

The last time Ghana was mapped was in 1974.