Jakarta to reintroduce `national IDs' in April

Bambang Nurbianto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Jakarta wants to become the first local government in the country to start issuing national identity card (IDs) again for its residents by launching the national ID program this April, although nationally it will not begin until April of next year.

"We will become the first province to apply the program if we launch it in April. We plan to launch the program in Karang Anyar subdistrict in Central Jakarta," said the head of the Jakarta Civil Records Office, Silviana Murni, on Tuesday.

Silviana said the program would be implemented in stages as only 43 out of the total number of 167 subdistricts in the city were ready to implement the program, and the printing machines for the ID cards were only available at her office.

She added that because of the limited number of laser printers owned by the city administration, the process of issuing the IDs would take around six days, not one day as had been the case previously with the old ID cards.

In 1996, Governor Surjadi Soedirdja launched the national identity card program in Jakarta with Menteng district in Central Jakarta being selected for a pilot scheme.

The 1996 program was part of the central government's plan to institute a national identity card system with every citizen being issued an individual identification number to be employed for various administrative purposes from birth right through to death.

But the project, including the pilot scheme in Jakarta, was subsequently abandoned.

Recently, Minister of Home Affairs Hari Sabarno said that the government was ready to try again.

Hari said the system would simplify the current arrangements and the ID number would be used for all kinds of identification documents, such as driver's licenses, passports and birth certificates.

The number would attach to a citizen forever, and even after he or she died, it could not be used by anyone else.

Currently the country uses more than 50 registers to identify its citizens by their place of birth, residence and other particulars.

The new identification numbers will begin with the codes for the citizen's places of birth and residence in order to monitor his or her movements.

Silviana stressed that the city administration would not ask for any fee from citizens applying for the new IDs as a city bylaw provides that the issuance of IDs is free for all residents.

Among the subdistricts ready for the implementation of the scheme are Karang Anyar and Menteng in Central Jakarta; Pondok Kelapa and Klender in East Jakarta; Lenteng Agung and Pejaten Barat in South Jakarta; and Pegangsaan Dua and Kelapa Gading in North Jakarta.

Silviana said that physically the new IDs would be like driver's licenses or credit cards, and that they would be difficult to forge.

She expressed the hope that the home affairs ministry would issue the serial numbers for the new IDs as soon a possible, but even if the serial numbers were not issued by April, the city administration would still go ahead with the plan.

"We can change the serial numbers next year," Silviana said, adding that the citizens who would be issued with the new IDs were those whose old-style IDs had expired. Old IDs that had not expired would remain valid.