NIDS Will Facilitate Seamless Access to Benefits for Persons with Disabilities

The National Identification System (NIDS) will facilitate ease of verification and access to certain benefits for persons with disabilities.

Special provisions will be developed and implemented to ensure inclusiveness for elderly, homeless, and physically and mentally disabled persons.

Minister Without Portfolio in the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM), Hon. Floyd Green, made the disclosure during the Nationwide News Network (NNN) radio programme, ‘Ask the Minister’, on Tuesday (May 2).

“One of the big pluses of the national identification card is that it will help us to identify our disabled community. So you will have the national disability symbol if you are disabled; if you elect to have it, you will have to say you want it on your card,” he informed.

“What we do find is that one of the sectors of our population that has the biggest challenge with identity is our disabled community. You can imagine how it would make life easier if you have on your card the disabled symbol. So things like your parking spaces, you don’t have to go through another process to get a parking sticker, because you would have been identified as somebody with a disability,” the Minister further stated.

Mr. Green said the Jamaica Council for Persons with Disabilities (JCPD) is providing assistance to identify and register these persons under NIDS.

“They are going to be working with us in terms of getting their database that they already have signed up under the national identification system [for us] to be able to put on that symbol, to make it easier,” he added.

Mr. Green, who has responsibility for the NIDS programme and road safety, said the system is another step towards creating greater inclusivity in the society.

He noted that NIDS will also assist in streamlining the process for the disbursement of benefits under the Ministry of Labour and Social Security’s Programme of Advancement through Health and Education (PATH).

“Part of what we are doing is working with the Ministry of Labour to see how, once they have their National ID, we can streamline things like applications for PATH. We want to move to a stage where things, like payments, are easier because you now have this electronic database of verification,” Mr. Green said.