Government has abandoned its deadline for Barbadians to register for the new national identification card.
Rather than extend the January 31 deadline to apply for the ID, Minister of Industry, Innovation, Science and Technology Marsha Caddle made the announcement this morning that Government had removed it altogether.
Barbadians who have not registered as yet will not be discriminated against when they use the old form of ID first issued in 1979, Caddle assured.
In a Ministerial Statement shortly after the House of Assembly began sitting, Caddle said as of January 26, there were 243 320 Barbadians out of the population of 269 090 who had registered. That included 108 338 people over the age of 50 years.
As a result of the uptake in the IDs there was no need for the Government to act as an irritant to those who have not undertaken the exercise as yet.
“. . . It means that this Government need not act as an irritant to even a handful of Barbadians by insisting on mandatory adoption of the digital ID card, nor run the risk of disenfranchising those most in need of government services. In other words, the institutions of the State such as the Transport Board, the Barbados Drug Service and others that provide critical goods and services will not deny those goods and services to the very few numbers of Barbadians who may, as of February 1, 2024 or at any time in the future, present the old ID card.
This is ridiculous. Barbadians from all over the world came to Barbados to Beat the deadline and now government is saying there is no deadline. I am speechless.