T

he Jakarta Civil and Registry Agency is urging the Home Ministry to issue a regulation that will allow cities to print electronic identification cards (e-KTP) for their residents.

'We are demanding the Home Ministry let cities print their own e-KTPs,' agency head Purba Hutapea told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.

He said the agency was forced to revert to using conventional IDs when residents holding electronic cards lost them or needed to update their data. Right now, the ministry exclusively holds the right to print the cards.

'Some people lost their e-KTPs, damaged them, were misprinted or moved to a new address. These people were unable to immediately get replacement cards from the ministry and could not use reference letters from us. That is why we reverted back to the old ID cards,' Purba said.

He was referring to a procedure from the ministry that allows the agency to issue a reference letter explaining that the card holder had already made an electronic card.

However, some institutions such as the police and banks have refused to accept the letters, while the data validation and printing process of new electronic cards in the ministry could take months.

Purba said each of the five municipalities and the Thousand Islands regency had received two printers from the ministry but were unable to use them yet as the ministry had not issued any instructions on how they should use them.

'If the ministry can only provide them, we are ready to make procurement for district offices and subdistrict offices with the city budget,' he said.

He said last year that each printing device cost Rp 35 million (US$3,594).

To date, the agency has received 5.5 million cards from the ministry or 91 percent of the recorded data of residents that reached 6,030,913 people. Of the printed cards, only 4.9 million had been distributed to residents.

Some of the 600,000 undistributed cards had been misprinted so the agency returned them to the ministry, while the remaining cards were for people who had moved and were still using old ID cards.

Syarifudin, 40, a resident of Jatinegara in East Jakarta, said it took around two weeks for him to get a new electronic card.

'To me, two weeks is a long time to have to wait for a new e-KTP,' he said.

Data from the agency says there are 7 million Jakartans eligible for identity cards. Of the figure, the ministry had only targeted the agency to submit the data of 6.4 million people. The agency had fulfilled 94 percent of the target.

The nationwide application of e-KTPs is targeted to start in early 2014. Unlike the old ID cards, the e-KTP has a chip that records the holder's personal data, including fingerprints and a retinal scan.

The government has said that e-KTPs were essential for a range of civic administrative requirements and would also lead to vastly improved voter lists in the upcoming elections.

Critics, however, previously alleged that the procurement of the e-KTP system, which cost the state Rp 5.8 trillion ($602.68 million) might have involved irregularities.

In September last year, an investigator from the Business Competition Supervisory Commission (KPPU), Hadi Susanto, alleged that the procurement committee that worked for the ministry had violated guidelines provided by the government's Goods and Services Procurement Agency (LKPP).