KABUL - Officials have said five e-Nic centers will open in Kabul and that the new ID cards will start being issued by the end of the month.
Humayoun Muhtat, Director of Biometric Identity Cards Issuing Authority (BICIA), said Thursday all necessary arrangements are in place to rollout electronic identity cards to the people by the end of the month.
In addition, the office of the second vice president said all legal and political issues had been ironed out.
Next week, five e-NIC centers will be opened in the capital, said Muhtat, adding that the rollout process will help revive the international community’s trust in Afghanistan.
“If we do not manage to find qualified employees with information technology expertise, this would be a matter of concern for us,” added Muhtat.
In the past month, the BICIA hired 500 additional employees and plans to recruit more technical staff to carry out the process.
This comes after the much-awaited rollout hit constant deadlocks including that involving Article 6 of the Census Law relating the ethnicity. But the controversial issue was eventually resolved after President Ashraf Ghani issued a decree.
“The issue was resolved, Article 6 of the Census Law was amended and the cabinet approved it, later on the president approved the census law on the basis of the same amendment,” said second vice president Sarwar Danish’s media advisor Hedayat.
“Unfortunately the process is moving forward illegally, decrees are even not sent for years to the national assembly,” said the head of the senate’s legislative committee Ghulam Muhaiuddin Munsif.
Last week government announced the establish of  an e-NIC rollout monitoring committee which includes representatives from the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), Ministry of Interior (MoI), Ministry of Finance (MoF) and the Independent Directorate of Local Governance (IDLG).
The new ID cards have better security features and will be extremely difficult to forge, officials said. (Tolonews)