‘Lack of funding holds up NID project’

By JUNIOR UKAHA
INSUFFICIENT funding and lack of mobile kits’ have hindered implementation of the National Identification (NID) project in Morobe, says registrar Keputong Geibob.
Geibob said since the NID office was established in Lae in 2016, they had registered a mere 5000 people.
He said the Morobe Registry Office, which also looks after the NID project, needed about K200,000 annually to successfully implement its programmes but it has not been adequately funded.
Geibob said the provincial registry office implemented the NID project, issued birth, death and marriage certificates and facilitated child adoption.
“At the moment we are working at a very slow pace,” he said.
“Things are not going as planned.
“We are attending to about 50 people per day because we have only one machine working.
“If we had enough funding and more mobile kits, we can process up to 300 people per day.
“We need to go to the villages, wards, local level governments and districts to collect NID data instead of staying in Lae and waiting for them to come to us.
“I have been given K20, 000 this year to run the registry but this amount is not enough.”
Geibob said in the 2010 National Census, the province had a population of about 500,000.