News
New NICs next year after amendment to Registration of Persons Act
Amendments to the Registration of Persons Act which would include the introduction of biometrics to the National Identity Card (NIC) will be taken up in Parliament for approval next month, the Department of Registrar of Persons (DRP) said.
The approval when granted will give the green light to the DRP to go ahead with issuing the new NICs
A top official of the Department said preliminary work to start issuing the biometric NICs will begin next year.
“Once Parliamentary approved is obtained, the DRP can call for tenders for the procurement of machines that would print the biometric NICs,” he said.
Meanwhile the Information & Technology Agency (ITA) is in the process of training photographers nominated by the DRP to take photographs that conform to international standards. The DRP is also training its staff in the 331 units of its network.
The new NICs will have personal details of all citizens over the age of 15 which will be placed in the Central Data Base System (CDBS) and will be linked to several departments including the Immigration & Emigration, Customs, Registrar of Motor Vehicles, Inland Revenue and banks for easy data access.
The card will have machine assisted identity of the face and finger prints of the person. It will also have 12 digits with the year of birth mentioned in full instead of only the last two digits. This has become necessary because of the numbers getting repeated for those born in the year 2000 and after. Accordingly a person born on 27.03.2016 (today) and another who was born on 27.03.1916 get the same computerised number. Also in view of the increasing number of registrations the department has been forced to add a digit towards the end.
Moreover, from 2017 onwards, the Department plans to register all new born babies in its system and issue NICs to them when they reach the age of 15.
The official said the existing NICs will not be revoked and said they can be used along with the new NICs. He said that issuing new NICs to 15 million people with the existing demand of one million NICs a year will be an uphill task,” he said.
Starting next month the Department of Registrar of Persons will use a new application form to those applying for identity cards.
The DRP said that in keeping with gazette notification no.1946/31 of 22.12.2015 it has printed a common application form bearing No. D.R.P. V/01, 07, 08.iinstead of three different forms that are in use.
The new application can be obtained from all Divisional Secretariats, Grama Niladharis, principals of schools and estate superintendents. In addition the forn can also be down loaded from the department website www.drp.gov.lk
The department also said that it would continue to accept photographs of size 1 3/8″ X 7/8″.