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Thieves have invaded, created artificial shortages and virtually taken over the ongoing mass registration exercise in parts of the Greater Accra region organised by the National Identification Authority (NIA) to provide a credible and secure national identification system. Noble as the exercise undoubtedly it, some unscrupulous Ghanaians have managed to secure the mass registration forms to extort GH�1.00 each from hundreds of frustrated applicants who skip long queues to register. Investigations conducted by the Heritage, following myriad of complaints from applicants, uncovered such corrupt acts at Domiabra in the Ga West Municipal Assembly on Saturday, December 12, 2009. Aside of the designated registration centre at the Domiabra Methodist Primary School with registration centre number 0301-0079A, some crooks captured on video created their own joint inside a primary two classroom to register applicants for a fee, contrary to the NIA Act (707), 2006 that provides the legal framework for the exercise. The process is simple: After creating the impression that the forms are in short supply, the agents, Allotey Gaison and James Dzreke approached applicants in long queues to convince them to pay GH�1.00 to register. Interested applicants are subsequently led into the classroom by the agents who walked them through the registration process as fast as possible at the expense of the many in the queue who cannot afford to pay. The unapproved transaction, on countless occasions, resulted in brawls between applicants who had been in long queues for hours and those who preferred to pay to register. One such incident over the form deals created a near fisticuff between one Selasi and Isaac Acwkerh, who claimed to be an officer of the Sunyani police station in the full glare of the public. Many other worrying reports from the Ayikuma Memorial Basic School, Santa Maria, parts of Dome were also gathered by the paper. With Accra�s four million population, if these agents who have vowed to cash in on the mass registration exercise are able to collect GH�1.00 each from just 500,000 applicants, one can imagine the booty they will make away with. When The Heritage contacted the NIA�s information/gender officer, Bertha S.Y. Dzeble, over the worrying development yesterday confirmed receiving similar reports from their personnel on the ground as well as the general public. �We are grateful to you for reporting this to us; we�ve also had similar reports, we�ve been getting follow-ups and have actually arrested some persons. �We encourage everybody who sees any such situation to just cause the arrest of the people. You don�t just need to report it to the NIA; please report it to the police and then let them just arrest them. You have also the evidence, please just give it to the police so that they go and pick those people up,� she advised.