FB pixel

Liberians request more biometric ID centers as govt poised to expand enrollment

Liberians request more biometric ID centers as govt poised to expand enrollment
 

The National Identification Registry of Liberia (NIR) will have to positively respond to requests from citizens for the creation of more biometric ID card issuance centers as it hopes to get more funding to speed up enrollment in all parts of the country.

Recently, there were calls from citizens in Nimba Country for the ID authority to create more centers as the few available ones are often jammed, slowing down the process, Daily Observer reports.

At the moment, the Ganta center in Nimba is seeing an influx of citizens, mostly from rural communities, who have been scrambling to register for an ID card in line with a deadline given by the president in an Executive Order making national ID registration mandatory.

The center serves many citizens who say they’ve been covering long distances and incurring huge financial costs to be able to show up for their ID registration. Many of them say they have been forced to stay longer in Ganta due to long queues at the center.

“We came from far distances. I’m from Gbi Chiefdom and have spent two weeks here,” a traditional ruler who travelled to Ganta for an ID card told Daily observer, lamenting that “we are stranded and hungry.”

An enrollment officer at the center is quoted as decrying the old and dysfunctional nature of the lone computer they have to serve the many citizens that flock in. Reports say the huge crowds pouring into the center for ID registration have sometimes led to chaotic scenes that threaten social peace.

In a recent interview with Biometric Update, NIR Executive Director Andrew Peters said they face major problems funding their birth registration and national ID operations as they depend largely on user fees.

As part of the World Bank-funded Governance Reform and Accountability Transformation (GREAT) project, NIR hopes to enroll at least two million citizens for national ID.

The country’s ID coverage figure is currently at less that 800,000, which represents only 14 percent of the country’s estimated five million citizens.

Last month, the NIR also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Liberia Telecommunication Authority (LTA) and the National Insurance Corporation of Liberia (NICO) for a health insurance pilot. The deal seeks to make the national ID card the main tool for access to insurance benefits, and also to fight pervasive fraud in the sector.

Related Posts

Article Topics

 |   |   |   |   |   |   |   | 

Latest Biometrics News

 

Biometrics providers and systems evolve or get left behind

Biometrics are allowing people to prove who they are, speeding journeys through airports, and enabling anonymous online proof of age,…

 

Findynet funding development of six digital wallet solutions

Finnish public-private cooperative Findynet has announced it will award 60,000 euros (US$69,200) to six digital wallet vendors to help translate…

 

Patchwork of age check, online safety legislation grows across US

As the U.S. waits for the Supreme Court’s opinion on the Texas case of Paxton v. Free Speech Coalition, which…

 

AVPA laud findings from age assurance tech trial

The Age Verification Providers Association (AVPA), and several of its members, have welcomed the publication of preliminary findings from the…

 

Sri Lanka to launch govt API policies and guidelines

Sri Lanka’s government, in the wake of its digital economy drive, is gearing up to release application programming interface (API)…

 

Netherlands’ asylum seeker ID cards from Idemia use vertical ICAO format

The Netherlands will introduce new identity documents for asylum seekers Idemia Smart Identity, compliant with the ICAO specification for vertical…

Comments

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Biometric Market Analysis

DIGITAL ID for ALL NEWS

Featured Company

ID for ALL FEATURE REPORTS

BIOMETRICS WHITE PAPERS

BIOMETRICS EVENTS

EXPLAINING BIOMETRICS