Office prints 72,000 NID cards in 21 days: Mobiha

By JASON DOM
WITH the printing machines back in action, the National Identity and Registry Office in Port Moresby has processed 72,000 NID cards in 21 days, says register-general Noel Mobiha.
Mobiha showed The National around the office and what was happening behind the scene of the card processing centre in Waigani.
The office had come under constant criticism in recent times because of its inability to meet demands caused by equipment malfunction or break down, with people queued up outside from dawn to dusk for service.
“Banks look after cash and the National Identity and Registry Office (NID) looks after the people’s identity,” Mohiba said.
“Both of the printing machines, NBS Higher Solution Printers, are now working and each prints 2,000 cards a day.
Mobiha said NID cards are for all provinces which are distributed accordingly.
“People have to understand this, there were no NID cards printed for the past seven months due to laminator issues within the printing machines,” he said.
“The reason is that both machines were brought in 2014 and gone past their five-year life span, hence we ordered parts to do upgrading within in this time.”
Card processing centre and printing manager Samuel Samson said technically the printing machine accomplished three things.
“First we slot 400 blank cards into the card case, it sends each empty card to the chip model where it prints a person’s information on the front and back of the card in 30 seconds,” Samson said.
“Secondly, we do the quality checks to cross check the biometrics and picture quality. When done we send to the laminator one and two for final the print-out.”
Mobiha said they were interested if a donor assist with a new printing machine which would cost about K30 million.