President of the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) Dr Ronnie Yearwood has questioned whether Government really needed to spend $10.4 million on new national identification cards for the population.
And the Alliance Party for Progress (APP) has raised concerns about the timing of the big expense, given the economic challenges facing the country and its residents.
During a press conference on Wednesday, Minister of Industry, Innovation, Science and Technology (MIST) Davidson Ishmael revealed that $10 434 601.99 had been spent to introduce the Trident cards that will replace the existing plastic IDs that authorities say are outdated and susceptible to fraud. He said the money had been spread over the last two financial years.
However, Dr Yearwood told Barbados TODAY he believed a basic ID card, which would have been a far less costly undertaking, was all that was required.
He questioned why the Mia Mottley administration had chosen a card that stores Barbadians’ personal information rather than a simpler option.
“The card should simply be an ID card. When you put storage value on the card you are increasing the risk of fraud and cybercrime. Adding that value makes it a more complex issue and if you have that kind of complexity it makes it hard to secure and protect people’s privacy,” he contended.
“Now we know that the Government doesn’t have the proper cyber security capacity to build this out and we also know there have been numerous examples of Government being hacked, whether it be the Supreme Court, the Welcome Stampers, we saw it during COVID where people’s data was breached, so I don’t understand what they are doing with this card and why they are going this far. All they needed to do was to introduce a very basic form of ID as we see across the Caribbean.
“But how is this costing $10 million to do this? Upwards to now, the minister has not revealed who the companies or the consultants behind this project are,” the DLP leader said.
Admitting that he expected the issue to be politicised, Ishmael had on Wednesday disclosed that between 2008 and 2018, the former DLP administration had spent almost $8 million on a multi-purpose identification card project that was never implemented.
In response, Dr Yearwood said the DLP could not be blamed for a decision by the current administration to abandon that project.
“I’m not going to get into a tit-for-tat with Davidson Ishmael about previous costs of an ID card and what happened before because the reality is the focus is now. In 2018, they became the Government and if they discard the project and decide to start a new one that is something on them,” he said.
Dr Yearwood said he was also concerned that only 6 950 cards had been delivered to date.
Meanwhile, APP leader Bishop Joseph Atherley told Barbados TODAY he was also perturbed about the $10 million price tag.
While saying he was not opposed to creating a safer and more secure ID card for Barbadians, he questioned whether it was necessary at this time.
The former Opposition Leader also questioned why the name of the company that provided the cards had not been named.
“Where is the money going and is there any special interest that is benefiting from the spending of taxpayers’ money? And the second thing is the context in which you spend the money is at a time when the Government is cash-strapped,” he said.
“Even if we had to move to this new ID card, did we have to move there at this time?” (RB)
