Foreign Minister Says NIDS Will Prevent Vulnerable Children Becoming Lost In Society

Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Senator the Hon. Kamina Johnson Smith, strongly believes the new National Identification System (NIDS) will help vulnerable children to not become lost in the society.

While responding to questions from members of the public at the virtual town hall, staged by the Joint Select Committee on the National Identification & Registration Act, 2020, on January 27, the Minister spoke passionately about how many lives and families that can be restored and their standard of living ultimately improved with NIDS.

“One of the things that we sometimes forget in the conversation is how much of a challenge life is without proper identification for many Jamaicans in disenfranchised or marginalised communities,” Mrs. Johnson Smith said.

“If you look through the newspapers or even Google, there are some stories about children who have not been in school and they are living on the margins of society, and it’s recognised that maybe they don’t have a birth certificate, they don’t have a family structure to support them and the ability to have an identification card, your own card, that can be used or delivered to you from birth. This is a benefit that will be a game changer in how our society is organised,” she added.

Mrs. Johnson Smith stressed that there are more needs in the society that are not being met with current systems, which the NIDS will help to solve.

“I think we need to also not look about people choosing the type of identification, but we need to also remember the many people who do not have [proper identification], and the Government intends to give this free identification to each and every citizen, and that I think is something that can take us leaps and bounds forward as a society that truly cares for the vulnerable,” she said.

For her part, Minister of Education, Youth and Information, Hon. Fayval Williams, said the Government now has a problem processing students who want tablets, because they do not have proper identification, which NIDS can solve, as the National Identification Number (NIN) can be assigned from birth.

“In the education sector, the Government has made available to families $20,000 towards the purchase of a laptop or tablet. We have been unable to give it to all 36,000 families because the persons who have registered or are trying to register, their name, their Tax Registration Number, their date of birth, don’t match and so we can’t go any further with trying to help them,” she said.

Mrs. Williams stressed that “it is important that we have a strong national ID, especially when it comes to government benefits to be issued to its citizens”.