Over 90,000 National Identification Cards are still to be uplifted from registration offices countrywide and the Guyana Elections Com-mission (GECOM) is urging “truant registrants” to do so before the old cards are decommissioned.
In a notice published in the daily newspapers on Sunday, GECOM said it was concerned about the situation, noting that the registrants were registered during the 2008 House-to-House exercise and the recently concluded Claims and Objections exercise. It added that over 90,000 National ID Cards were still in the possession of GECOM’s 23 Registration Area Offices and various Registration Offices countrywide. “GECOM takes this opportunity to call upon those truant registrants to make every effort to collect their ID cards, since failure to do could pose future problems for such registrants who have shirked their civic duty,” the notice read.
Further, GECOM said that it could soon move to decommission all National ID Cards issued prior to the 2008 registration exercise. It said such cards will not be accepted as a form of identification to vote at future general, regional and local government elections, since they would have no link to the new National Register of Registrants (NRR) and any voters’ lists to be produced therefrom.
GECOM is currently distributing National ID Cards at its 23 permanent registration offices during normal working hours, Mondays to Fridays. The exercise is to continue uninterrupted until June 30, 2010. Afterward, uncollected ID cards would be withdrawn from the registration offices and kept secured at the GECOM Secretariat, where they could be uplifted.
