Public urged to get their IDs

The Government will introduce a crash programme to expedite the issue of national Identity Cards to the estimated one million 'ID-less' citizens, the majority of whom are from North and East and the Estate sector.

Announcing Cabinet Decisions to the Media at the Information Department yesterday Health Minister and Cabinet Spokesman Nimal Siripala de Silva said a paper submitted by Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake in this regard was approved by the Cabinet on Wednesday.

"This programme is expected to rouse public interest and accelerate the on going ID project so that we can make the ID compulsory for voting at least from the next election," the Minister said.

Twenty five district coordinators, mostly retired administrative officers, will be appointed under this crash programme. They will conduct awareness programmes on IDs at district level.

A Parliamentary Act was approved in November last year to make the national IDs compulsory for voting to prevent chances for impersonations at polls. It is to come into effect from a year, November 18, 2005 after it was made sure all the registered voters are issued IDs by the Department as well as consent with all political parties.

A Parliamentary committee chaired by the Speaker was appointed to oversee the said issue and subsequently a massive islandwide programme was launched by the Public Security, Law and Order Ministry to issue IDs.

However, the response from the public had been very poor to this call by the Department of the Registrar of persons, with only around 10,000 applications for new IDs by July this year.

"This is very unsatisfactory," Minister De silva noted stressing that they needed public support to make the programme a success. He remarked if the public was not keen to acquire IDs even after so much ground level effort by the Government, it will have no option but to go ahead with the Act in order to prevent election malpractices.

The Government has deployed mobile ID units with photo facilities to villages to assist people in the application process and recruited retired public servants under district level to ease the work load. The Cabinet last month approved increased incentives for Grama Niladaris and district Secretaries, as a booster to prioritise this matter.

MF and RW