National ID a waste of money

THE EDITOR, Sir: THE NATIONAL Identification System (NIDS) is one of the worst constructed policies that Andrew Holness and his Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Government are seeking to unleash on the people of this island.

The JLP has so many social ills and infrastructural programmes of urgency, yet it seeks to squander billions of borrowed money on an identification scheme that will do nothing to the citizens of this country who already have in their possession driver’s licences, passports, and voter IDs.

Who will benefit from NIDS? Certainly, the vendor of ID equipment and the close political cronies who from every government always get the coveted contracts.

Jamaicans have always been short-changed by political parties and governments, but this time it is horrendous that this JLP regime is enforcing a Nazitype act on its citizens. Like the much-feared 666 system, the national ID will take away many of our human rights by tying every area of our life to government scrutiny. While the scheme, in all fairness, may facilitate the extraction of data where necessary for development, it will have no impact on the wider majority.

At the heart of this, however, is that the Government is selling out our country, selling our legacy and birthright for more loans in which generation upon generation will continue to be debtors and our assets indebted to international lending agencies.

Andrew Holness will go down in history as a prime minister who callously sold out this country for a bucket of shillings! MAURICE CHRISTIE Aboukir, St Ann