Police officers make ID cards for local residents in Kep province earlier this month. POLICE
The Ministry of Interior has renewed nearly 930,000 expired Cambodian identity cards after more than six months of campaigning by the end of May. The ministry has vowed to provide more than 1.7 million by the July 23 national election.
Ministry secretary of state Mao Chandara said that between 2022 and 2023, around 1,727,094 of the 12,793,679 national ID cards issued since 2012 have expired.
He shared the figures during a June 13 meeting, held to review the ministry’s current campaign which encourages people to apply for replacement cards.
The meeting was chaired by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Sar Kheng.
“As of May 31, around 929,816 replacement cards have been issued, the equivalent of 54 per cent of those that have expired. This means an additional 797,279 people require new ID cards,” said Chandara.
He noted that the holders of many of the outstanding expired cards may have migrated from one province to another, or gone abroad. In addition, some people have misused their ID cards by offering them as collateral for microfinance or informal loans.
He explained that in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, ID cards were issued without the use of information technology or biometrics.
“This changed in 2011, when we began to preserve fingerprint data to prevent duplicate cards being issued. The issuance of e-identity cards was formally launched in 2012, and to date, we have issued more than 12 million cards. The cards are valid for 10 years,” he said.
Sar Kheng told the assembled officials that the issue of people misusing ID cards will no longer exist in the near future, as a draft law on civil registration, vital statistics and identity confirmation is expected to be promulgated.
He instructed ministry officials to continue working together to implement the replacement card campaign, so that all eligible voters would be able to vote in the upcoming election.
The campaign began on November 15 last year, and is scheduled to come to an end on July 15.
“This is just the end of the campaign – it does not mean that we will no longer issue replacement cards to citizens. People will still be able to apply for new cards through their local authorities,” explained Sar Kheng.
