Noman Mosharef :
The Election Commission (EC) is going to arrange mass hearing programmes aimed to lessen the sufferings of people of the country in getting the National Identity Cards (NID). The programme will be arranged in regional level.
Over one million applications for NID correction remain pending across the country, according to EC officials. The sufferers are waiting hours together to have their NID cards.
The field level offices get requests from head office to solve these difficulties while the effort to solve the problems is on snail pace. As a result, the sufferings of the service receivers have mounted.
In addition, not only for NID card correction or voter area transfer, new voters who came to enlist themselves are also facing various difficulties. There is no option to blame the officials only for the sufferings but also the voters as they provide wrong information.
Officials said during the last one and a half years the EC was busy to arranging municipality and Union Parishad polls which made the huge jam at application process.
Sylhet regional election official Md Faysal Quader is a pioneer for the mass hearing concept to solve the NID-related problems. Due to election engineering works, a lot of applications on NID service-related have been dropped to Faysal Quader office as it could not possible to solve within short time.
Later, the idea of Faysal Quader was picked up Agargoan head office.
Faisal Quader said that on the day of public hearing, they were asked to come with whatever evidence they have. If half of the paperwork is correct and the case seems to be genuine, then we immediately correct the application of the person concerned. And if it is not considered correct then we sent a message to the mobile of the service recipient for necessary documents.
On the other hand, if new voters, who have applied online, can bring other proofs along with the print copy, then they are also given the online copy of NID.
A K M Humayun Kabir, Director General (DG), NID Wing, termed the issue as an innovative initiative. While he has not been able to respond to repeated appeals from field officials over the past few months, he sees the issue of public hearings as a powerful tool.
When Md. Humayun Kabir Khandaker, the EC Secretary, was informed about the initiative, he also agreed with it. He even instructed the field officers to take more innovative activities including public hearings. All regional election officials have been asked to ensure implementation of the issue.
