UNB, Dhaka :The Election Commission has failed to initiate the distribution of smart national identity cards (NIDs) among citizens despite its plan to complete it by June last.EC officials now say the Commission will soon start the distribution of machine readable cards to replace the existing laminated ones, but there is no timeline to launch it.”We’ll start the distribution of smart cards very soon, but there’s no specific date,” said EC Secretary Sirajul Islam.The EC will provide the high security featured cards in Dhaka and Panchargarh or any northern district first. “It’ll take at least 18 months to complete the distribution work,” he told UNB.In January 2015, a French digital security company, ‘Oberthur Technologies’, got the Tk 796-crore contact for production and distribution of 90 million smart NID cards with 25 security features within 18 months.The firm was scheduled to start the smart NID card production in September 2015 with a target to produce six million cards a month.As the Commission failed to distribute the smart cards within the stipulated time, the IDEA project period was extended to December 2017 from the July 2016 a few months back.A team of the World Bank, the co-financer of the project, also reviewed its overall progress in June last.Besides, an EC team, led by EC Secretary Sirajul Islam, has recently visited France to gather knowledge about the production and distribution of smart cards.The 10-digit smart cards will be distributed free under the EC’s Identification System for Enhancing Access to Services (IDEA) project.
