Affected persons will have an opportunity to initiate remedial action associated with deficiencies of the ID card

Dec 11, 2009 Letters

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Dear Editor,
Please permit me to respond to the letter authored by Mr. Ronald Harsawack which was published under the titles (i) “GECOM should have had quality control protocols in place in relation to the photographs on ID cards” (SN -December 10, 2009) (ii) “Whose picture is on the ID card” (GC- December 10, 2009, and (iii) “GECOM has produced a product that leaves one guessing whose picture is on that ID card” (Kaieteur News – December 10, 2009).  The following represents the facts associated with the issues raised by Mr. Harsawack:-
GECOM had recognised the need for and had installed an appropriate quality control procedure to ensure that ID cards of the highest quality were produced. This procedure operated throughout the three 8-hour shifts per day during the ID card production exercise.
Notwithstanding this undertaking, the Commission anticipated that glitches, inter alia poor photographs, would have been encountered, especially since this system was being operated by humans, and in spite of the extensive training provided to them.
As we had publicly pointed out earlier, every ID card distribution centre was and continues to be equipped with a digital camera, with clear instructions for the staff to retake registrants’ photographs which are found to be markedly dissimilar to the facial features of the respective registrants. Should any registrant, collecting his/her ID card, not be satisfied with the quality of the photograph because his/her facial features are not recognisable, he/she could request that his/her photograph be re-taken on the spot and that remedial action leading to reproduction of the ID card with an acceptable photograph be taken. Of course, the staff in charge of the distribution centre will have a say on whether the request is justified as against an attempt to abuse the system.
Alternatively, affected persons will be afforded the opportunity to initiate remedial action, associated with deficiencies of the ID cards, during the conduct of the imminent Claims and Objections exercises for the upcoming Local Government Elections which will be carried out individually within all of the 71 Local Government Areas i.e. 65 Neighbourhood Democratic Councils (NDCs) and six Municipalities.  We urge such persons take advantage of this opportunity.
Referring to the new national identification cards, Mr. Harsawack posited that (i) numerous cards contain photographs that are unrecognizable which defeats the purpose of picture identification, and (ii) many images are so obscured, it is impossible to decipher any distinguishable facial feature. We will not attempt to interpret the terms “numerous and many” as penned by Mr. Harsawack, nor will we speculate on the number of ID cards that might have been found by him to fall within these categories of defective ID cards.
GECOM will be in the position to accurately determine how many persons were affected by the problem of defective photographs at the end of the current ID card distribution exercise.
It is perplexing though that a registrant would have uplifted an ID card produced in his/her name when, according to Mr. Harsawack, the photograph would have been either “unrecognizable which defeats the purpose of picture identification” or “so obscured, it is impossible to decipher any distinguishable facial feature”.  Clearly, cards falling within these two categories should not have been collected by the respective registrants. Please allow us to use this opportunity to reiterate that affected registrants are provided the window of opportunity to seek redress via the procedures documented at the 3rd and 4th paragraphs above.  We strongly urge that they so do.
With respect to the comment that “in many cases the staff that used digital cameras, seem to have had no idea of lighting conditions, lens focus length, backlighting, artificial lighting, among the other technical considerations”, we must emphasise that GECOM provided training, re-training and refresher training to the temporary personnel who had been employed to work during the 2008 House-to-House Registration exercise. Considering that those were not photographers by profession, and the fact that the overwhelming majority of the photographs taken during the exercise are of good quality, the Commission is not dissatisfied with the level of success achieved. We must hasten to point out that this does not mean that we did not aim for 100% achievement insofar as the taking of quality photographs was concerned.
Indeed, because of the opportunities offered – as delineated above – we hope to have all ID cards with superlative quality.  At this time we are heartened by the fact that hundreds of thousands of registrants have already uplifted their ID cards based on their satisfaction of the quality.
We consider the comments documented in the concluding paragraph of Mr. Harsawack’s letter to be speculative and therefore not worthy of response.
Please permit us the opportunity to acknowledge the comments documented in an ‘unsigned’ letter titled “Pictures on old ID card are of better quality”, which was published in the Guyana Times of Thursday, December 03, 2009. We commend the author of this letter for having treated with decorum the relevant issues in a factual, open minded, unabrasive, non-speculative, non-accusatory and non-condemnatory manner.
Vishnu Persaud
Public Relations Officer

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