No fee for NID card, says Maru

National

THE National Identification Card (NID) is free and anyone charging for it to be processed should be reported to police, National Planning and Monitoring Minister Richard Maru says.
Maru’s reiterated the previous government’s announcement that no one should pay for the card after concerns were raised by the public in some parts of the country, including Morobe, that officers attached to NID offices were charging fees to process them.
“No one is to pay,” Maru said in Lae yesterday.
“If anyone is charging, we need to report them to the police and have them arrested and charged.
“The government will allocate more funding in the 2018 budget to roll out the programme not only in the towns and cities but also we are going to start looking at district rollouts.
“Over the next three years, we should have everyone registered with a national identification card.”
Maru said the government would employ more people for NID next year.
The minister had earlier stated that more than 140,000 cards had been produced and more than K200 million had been spent on the programme since its inception.