The Election Commission’s national identity registration (NID) wing has blamed France’s Oberthur Technologies for the slow pace of production and distribution since their contract was signed two and a half years ago.
The NID wing has now decided to produce the cards in Bangladesh.
“There is no reason to worry,” said Brig Gen Saidul Islam, director general of the NID wing.
“We are assembling a team quickly. Personalisation machines are also working. We will try to finish distributing the rest of the cards by December. There is no need for confusion or anxiety,” he added.The personalisation machine adds the identification information of citizens to the smartcards.
The Election Commission signed a deal with Oberthur in 2015 to distribute fully functional smartcards to 90 million voters by Jun 30, 2016.
Oberthur was to finish producing the cards within 18 months and send them to the Election Commission. Then, after personalisation, the cards would be distributed at the Upazila level.
However, Oberthur failed to deliver the cards by the deadline and the deal was extended by one year. The company was still unable to meet the deadline.About sixty million cards have so far arrived from France, EC and NID officials said. More than 25 million blank cards are still to be produced.
However, another shipment of 10 million cards is to arrive soon, said Director General Islam. The EC will still have to obtain 15 million more cards.
Only 12.4 million cards have been personalised so far. It will take a substantial amount of time to input the identification information of the remaining citizens.
The EC cancelled the contract with Oberthur on Jul 23, alleging ‘unprofessional conduct’. The contract is now to be given to a Bangladeshi company.
The production of the cards has stopped due to the contract’s cancellation which delayed distribution, officials said.
“The contract is now going to a local company, not foreigners. We are repaying the World Bank debt by using people’s money, we can’t play games,” Islam said.
Source: bdnews24
