Yaounde: getting ID card still nightmarish

It is 10 am this October 12th 2022 at the public security office in Mendong, Yaounde and the endless queues are telling of the quality of service.

Persons can be seen with documents in hand waiting for their names to be called up in order to obtain their national ID cards and others are called in to extend their expired cards.

The complex procedure of processing the documents aside, many say they have gone for years without obtaining the original cards.

According to Mafouo Yota, an inhabitant of the city, she has faced countless embarrassments from the police ever since the over-stamped receipt got really old and became barely visible:

“I have been expecting my NIC for over three years now, I am tired, I suffer a lot even to travel from one place to another.”

She laments that, despite presenting her ID receipts at security checkpoints, many officers still tend to want to pull out huge sums from her for not possessing an original NIC.

Another source says the cumbersome process of obtaining a NIC is exhausting as it takes days for documents to be processed:

“This is five days now that I have been trying to get an ID card. There is always a huge crowd here but few officials to attend to us. This is tiring because I left everything I was supposed to do since last week just to make an ID card.”

While some hope for the day they will finally have their original cards, others are appealing to the government to spare them the stress by digitalizing the process as it has been done for passports.

It is alleged that the delay in the production of the originals of ID cards is due to shortage of equipment and the expensive nature of microchips at the General Delegation for National Security (DGSN).

It should be recalled that in 2016, the government announced the introduction of the new electronic and biometric secured format of national ID cards which allow security officers to get details about the holder when chipped into their system.

The move was in a bid to strengthen security in the country by combating identity theft and document fraud. However, it seems to have done more harm than good as the microchips are said to be scarce and unavailable which has slowed down the massive production of the original ID cards.