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.

Article Topics

Africa  |  biometrics  |  civil registration  |  digital ID  |  digital identity  |  legal identity  |  Liberia  |  national ID  |  World Bank