ID DOCUMENTS
Emergency order for swipe cards
Cabinet agrees to purchase; BMA out of materials
The Cabinet yesterday passed a resolution to urgently procure the materials needed to make the old version of magnetic strip ID cards that the government had previously planned to replace with the microchip-embedded "smart cards". The resolution came the day after the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) announced it had run out of the materials to manufacture either the magnetic tape or the microchip cards due to a delay in the planned purchase of microchip-embedded cards earlier this month. "The Provincial Administra-tion Department has now been assigned to urgently procure 1.5 million magnetic strip cards. The process should be completed within the next few months," caretaker Deputy Interior Minister Sermsak Pong-panit said yesterday. In the run-up to the upcoming general election issuing ID cards will be crucial. However, Sermsak said eligi-ble voters would be able to cast their ballots with their temporary ID cards as long as they had photographs affixed with an official seal to the thin yellow papers. Sermsak said the Information and Communications Technology Ministry (ICT) would allocate its Smart Card budget to purchase magnetic strip cards. According to Sermsak, differing opinions on an ICT panel had delayed the purchase of microchip-embedded cards earlier this month. Caretaker deputy government spokesman Danuporn Punnakan disclosed that a company had offered to deliver 13 million microchip-embedded cards to the government between October 20 and November 10 at Bt61.50 per card, but another company offered to deliver the same quantity at Bt42 each within 120 days of the date the purchase order was signed. "Last Friday, representatives from the ICT and the Interior Ministry met to reach a conclusion and decided to urgently procure the magnetic-strip cards instead," Danuporn said. Bangkok Governor Apirak Kosayodhin said it was not the BMA's fault it had not been able to issue ID cards so far. "We have to wait for materials from the Interior Ministry," he said. According to Apirak, between 5,000 and 7,000 people apply for Smart Cards in the capital each day.
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