Free of charge service ends late April

The city administration has reminded the public that the government-funded free of charge electronic ID card, or e-KTP, service will be stopped at the end of April.

After that period, any resident wishing to get an electronic ID card will have to pay a fee.

The city’s Civil Registry Agency senior official Nyoman Suarjana disclosed that the administration had drafted a bylaw that would serve as a legal basis for the collection of the fee.

“The central government has given Denpasar and the other 197 cities and regencies until the end of this year to complete the migration from conventional to electronic IDs. The remaining 300 regencies and cities will be given until the end of 2013,” Suarjana said.

So far, as many as 367,298 residents have registered for the migration process.

The migration is carried out by 27 electronic ID machines placed in the city’s four districts. Each machine can process up to 150 migrations per day.

As of early April, the machines have completed 269,682 migrations, which means they have less than 30 days to complete the remaining 97,616 migration applications.

Suarjana stressed that electronic IDs were far more sophisticated than the conventional IDs, as the former stored and utilized biometric data, such as iris and fingerprint information.

This advanced level of security would prevent illegal duplication, ensure that a resident would only have one ID and would make it easier for the authority to develop a national database.

“Producing an electronic ID is not a cheap process. The existing migration phase is financed by the central government.  

“When this phase ends, we will have to finance the process by ourselves,” he said.

“That’s why we are now submitting a draft of a bylaw to the city’s council. The bylaw will enable us to collect a fee from the resident who would like to apply for a new electronic ID, or extend the old one,” he added.

Suarjana estimated that the fee would be around Rp 30,000.

“We have invested a lot in ensuring that the process is quick and convenient for residents,” he said, adding that the city had trained 56 personnel to operate the machines.

The residents, however, still felt that the process was too slow.

“I processed the migration of my conventional ID last month. The new, electronic ID has yet to reach my hand.

“Now, my conventional ID had expired and I do not have any other valid ID to process my banking transactions,” said resident Wayan Ambara, adding that he initially thought that he would receive the electronic ID the day he joined the migration process.