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fter waiting for months, citizens in Jakarta will soon receive their new electronic identification cards (e-ID) as the city administration has finally begun distribution of the new cards.

City Civil Registration Agency chief Purba Hutapea said Friday that the agency had received a total of more than 1.9 million e-ID deliveries from the Home Ministry.

“Around 810,000 card owners in West Jakarta have been summoned to their respective subdistrict offices to receive the new cards,” Purba said.

West Jakarta was the only municipality in Jakarta prepared to distribute the new cards through every subdistrict office, he said.

In order to be able to provide the e-ID cards to their rightful owners, card holders will have to verify their identities by having their fingerprints scanned.

“All subdistricts in West Jakarta have received scanner equipment sets. We are still completing the distribution of the sets in other municipalities,” Purba said.

Scanning equipment had been installed at all 56 subdistrict offices in West Jakarta, four offices in North Jakarta, 10 in East Jakarta, 10 in Central Jakarta, 15 in South Jakarta and six in the Thousand Islands regency.

The city agency was still working to complete ID data collection before the deadline by the end of April.

Agency officials had only been able to collect identification data from less than 5.7 million people out of a target of around 7.4 million.

In the data collection process, residents were to visit their local subdistrict offices to provide basic information and have their biometric data recorded. The information would then be sent to the ministry database to be validated.

Only residents with validated identification data would receive the new ID cards.

Sulistyo Prabowo, the agency’s technology and information division chief, said that the agency had allocated a total of Rp 7.1 billion (US$774,000) for procurement of 169 e-ID data collection and scanner unit sets. “The Home Ministry only provided us 88 sets. We need to procure the rest ourselves so that all 267 subdistrict offices have their own in the future,” Sulistyo said.

The central government aims to establish a single identity number for every citizen and distribute e-ID cards to more than 105 million citizens by the end of 2012.

The project, at an estimated cost of Rp 6.3 trillion, was launched in February last year.

The e-ID card identity number will be a citizen’s only identification number and will be valid for life.

The card will contain comprehensive information about the holder, including marital status, blood type, parents’ names, employment, physical or mental disabilities, birth certificate, divorce certificate, place and date of birth, biometric fingerprints of all fingers, iris patterns and a photo of the subject.