The Election Commission has proposed an extension of the smart national identity (NID) card project even though those multipurpose cards are yet to be distributed.
The EC was supposed to distribute the cards to over 95 million citizens between September 2015 and June 2016 under the Identification System for Enhancing Access to Services (IDEA) project.
The production of the smart cards was also scheduled to start last month, but there has been no progress.
Project Director Brig Gen Sultanuzzaman Md Saleh Uddin told bdnews24.com on Tuesday that they wanted the project to run until December 2017.
“The expenditure of the project won’t increase if it’s deadline is extended. But the added time will allow us to properly manufacture and distribute the smart cards,” he said.
“We hope the deadline will be extended on logical grounds. The production of smart cards will also begin very soon. We’ll get more time to distribute them.”
If they were to distribute the high quality cards by June next year, they would have to ‘rush, added Saleh Uddin, hinting that would not be help them to finish the project properly.
Saleh Uddin is also the director general of the EC’s National Identity Registration Wing (NIDW).
Source: Bd news24