It has, so far, registered 2,467,617 in the Ashanti Region, 1,995,669 in the Greater Accra, Volta - 568,265, Central - 625,803, Northern - 510,047 and Western - 530,684.

The rest of the regions are; Oti - 360,296, Bono - 294,440, Bono East - 277,485, Upper East - 220,191, North East - 197,057, Western North - 217,719, Savannah - 178,009, Upper West - 146,976, Ahafo - 141,191.

Mr Francis Palmdeti, the Head of the Corporate Affairs Unit of the NIA, told the Ghana News Agency in Accra on Wednesday that it was currently registering people in the Western, Western North and Central regions.

 He said Eastern Region would be the next stop for the mass registration in March, which would be the last region to be registered.

Giving a breakdown of the occupational registration statistics, Mr Palmdeti said 1,550,984 farmers had been registered, students - 1,363,104, retail market traders - 827,084, unemployed - 473,174, and teachers - 379,237.

The rest are business men/women - 334,841, artisans including tailors, dressmakers, sewers, upholsterers and related workers - 280,708 and hairdressers, barbers, beauticians and related workers constituted 213,490, retirees - 185,758, while bricklayers, carpenters and other construction workers made up 125,266.

He said the Authority would use the first two weeks in April to do the mop-up exercise across the country and afterwards set up cognate offices to enable those who could not register during the mass registration exercise to do so.

Commenting on the slow pace of the registration process, Mr Palmdeti said sometimes the network slowed down the registration process while inconsistency with an applicant's biometric data could also delay the issuance of the ID card.

He explained that under normal circumstances, it took a maximum of 30 minutes to complete the registration of an applicant, adding that every registration centre was supposed to have three registration machines with each capable to register at least 30 applicants a day.

"For instance, if your finger prints match the machines by 50 per cent or you have changed your date of birth but you haven't gone through the legal processes or not gazette your name after changing it, you may have a problem getting your ID card," Mr Palmdeti said.

Responding to the challenge with people not getting their digital address code to register for the Ghana Card, Mr Palmdeti said the Ghana Post GPS had an offline mode service that enabled everybody, irrespective of where one stayed, to access his or her digital address without much difficulty.

"In all the rural areas we visited people brought their digital addresses and so if you look at the occupational chart, farmers who mostly live in the rural areas are the highest with approximately 1.5 million."

The mass registration for the Ghana Card started nationwide from the Greater Accra Region on April 29, 2018, and expected to end by March, 2020.