NID card legal identity

  By HENRY PAMBUAI  

THE PNG National Identification (NID) card is the legal universal identity in the country, which supersedes all other forms of identity documents, says the country’s registrar-general Dickson Kiragi.

He said this yesterday when clarifying the position of the NID card among other information-gathering agencies including the PNG Electoral Commission and the National Statistical Office. 

“This is the primary identity card that relates to all citizens, who are declared under the constitution either born before independence or born after independence as automatic citizens and those who become naturalised citizens,” Kiragi said. “This office is the mandated office to issue NID card based on the fact that a birth is registered, to which we issue a birth certificate and those who are 18 and above, we issue a NID card.

“This is the fundamental document and all other documents are secondary. They are all link to the NID card based on the information that we collected.

“In the case of other entities, whether it be the Electoral Commission or Department of Personnel Management, which contains all the personal records of public servants, even employers where you have your own personal records, they must be linked to the NID card, which means that there is a uniform information across all spectrums of agency.”

Kiragi said when people came to interact with any agency where they have claims to entitlements or inheritance issues, the NID card would the utility to serve that purpose.

“We have what is now called the national register and that is established through the national database that we have,” Kiragi said.

“That national register contains your birth register, marriage register, death register and ID register, so these registers interact with all other registers, including the voter’s register.

“Basically, the identity card that we issue is to verify with other registers for whatever purposes it intends to serve so in this way we do not replace nor undermine any entity or for that matter the Electoral Commission registers.

“They (Electoral Commission) are also mandated by the necessary legislation to be able to collect, store and process information for their purpose.

“So the register that we have here does not in any way replace voter register or any other registers for that matter, however, we carry the private information.”

Kiragi said the NID card supersedes all forms of identity documents in the country and links one person to one identity, eliminating identity theft and fraud.