Paper ID cards being added to biometric system

KABUL (Pajhwok): The Central Statistics Organization (CSO) on Sunday said national identity (ID) cards are being added to the biometric system in coming days in order to prevent misuse of paper ID cards.

CSO director Ahmad Javed Rasouli, told an event “Accountability of the Government before the Nation” here that the process to register ID cards into the biometric system would be conducted within two weeks.

In the past, millions of paper ID cards (Tazkira) had been distributed to people, but last year as part of a special program for elections more than 4.5 million new paper ID cards were issued nation-wide.

Besides distribution of paper ID cards, electronic ID cards were also issued last year and according to Rasouli, around 120,000 individuals had been issued e-ID cards so far.

According to him, the distribution of e-ID cards would take a long time as the country lacked enough preparation for distribution of e-ID cards thought out the county and therefore the CSO was working to store data of all paper ID cards into biometric system to prevent corruption in its distribution process.

He assured that registration of paper ID cards into the biometric system would not take much time.

He further said currently those having papers ID cards faced some issues in getting passports because they have to visit the ID cards distribution administration for his/her ID card’s confirmation.

He assured after biometric registration of national ID cards, citizens would not need to take their ID cards for confirmation.

pk/ma