Bulolo to pilot registration

Bulolo district’s 200,000 people are to be registered under the national identification system from next month.
Bulolo MP and Minister for Communications, Information Technology and Energy Sam Basil signed an agreement with the PNG Civil and Identity Registry in Port Moresby yesterday, making him the first MP in this pilot project for identification cards.
“I am proud to be the first to engage my district into this NID programme,” he said.
Basil said registering the people of the district was in line with Bulolo district’s five-year development plan, with ward one of Buang local level government to be participating in a few weeks’ time.
“This document (agreement) will allow me to take it back to my district board to allocate funding and we will start to register people in my district starting from the Buang local level government,” he said.
“Once we finish that, we will move on to Mumeng LLG, Watut LLG, Wau Rural, Wau-Bulolo Urban and finally we will do it with Waria because Waria and Wau rural – parts of them do not have access to roads.
“In PNG, we are very good at criticising, we criticise and we do not come up with an option. I come here with an option – let’s take it back to the districts where majority of Papua New Guineans are.”
“We know that in our rural districts we need logistics, allowances, food supplies.
“I know that the NID office is not fully funded.
“The cost of hire cars, logistics, we will share the daily allowance, we will provide the security and, of course, the accommodation, it will roughly work between K25,000 to K30,000 a month.”
Basil said a similar exercise will be done for SIM card registrations.
“Many people want to do those things in a last-minute effort, we do not want to force people to do it, but we will take it to them.”
PNG Civil and Identity Registry acting registrar-general Michael Kumung said the office would start mobilising a team into the district.