The National Capital District Governor Powes Parkop says the PNG National Identity Project (NID) is a failure because it will not be used in the 2017 National Elections.
“I want to express my disappointment with the NID system; the National Government have put in a lot of money,’’ Mr Parkop said.
“I don’t understand why it did not start immediately after the close of the 2012 election and we would be coming to a conclusion now as we come to the next election.
“I do not know (what) the cause of the failure is. Perhaps the problem is we try to set up another agency when we have the Electoral Commission already here.
“The Minister for National Planning (Charles Abel) should have allowed the Electoral Commission to undertake this exercise so we don’t build new infrastructure, getting new people to do the same job and we duplicate things.
“I do understand that on the one hand we want to achieve other outcomes on NID, it will be used for wider purpose than just for election but I am sure the existing agency, the Electoral Commission, can deliver the same outcome.”
The NID project was launched on November 2014 as an ID card system that will have personal information and statistics on all citizens and will upon completion be used as a form of identification for eligible voters to use to cast their votes in next year’s elections.
The National Government allocated K55 million in the 2015 budget to roll out the project last year.