As part of the preparations aimed at successful production of the national smart cards, negotiations with major stakeholders like the Traffic Police and the Immigration and Emigration Department, are underway and will be concluded next month.

This was revealed yesterday by the coordinator of the National Identity Card Project, Pascal Nyamurinda.

He said once these technical issues that concern specifications and integration of the systems are completed, then production will begin immediately.

"We already contracted a United Kingdom-based company that will execute the project. As per now, we are upgrading the system in a bid to integrate the various services.”

"Only the Traffic Police and immigration services will be initially be accessed by the card but with time we shall integrate others like RAMA, Rwanda Revenue Authority services and banking services among others.”

With reference to usage, the coordinator noted that it will be the easiest way to clarify any national’s details.

"The card has a chip that that stores all this information. For example, traffic police officers will simply use a certain machine to confirm driving license details while those in immigration will also be able to tell details in a holder’s passport using this card,” he added.

While smart card negotiations continue, different conclusions have also been reached between the ID project and local government officials to ease the mechanisms for nationals to acquire national identity cards.

"We are training more data collection officers in a bid to ease national ID service delivery. Most of our staff, especially at the local level, had left these jobs, so we are working hand-in-hand with the local government to create some changes that will facilitate this need,” the coordinator noted.

Smart cards are an integrated system that allows users to access various services by use of one mechanism.

In Rwanda, the card will be issued to citizens who already possess the electronic national identity cards.

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