People to pay for NID card renewal, corrections

People will have to pay for renewal and correction of any information in their National Identity (NID) cards from September.

The Election Commission (EC) on Sunday issued a gazette notification imposing the new charge for this service, which are not provided free of cost.

As a new rule, any person will have to pay Tk 100 for renewal of NID card or Tk 150 for emergency delivery.

If the card is lost or damaged, the person will have to pay Tk 200 (emergency Tk 300) for first time, Tk 300 (emergency Tk 500) for second time and Tk 500 (emergency Tk 1,000) to get a new copy.

As per existing law, all the NID cards must be renewed after 15 years from the date of its issuance, said Brig Gen Sultanuzzaman Md. Saleh Uddin, Director General of NID wing of the EC.

Besides, the EC will also impose charge for online data checking of the NID card holders by entitled government or private bodies from September.

The EC started preparing NID cards alongside the preparation of the voter list with photographs from 2007. Therefore, people who were registered as voters got the NID cards.

Currently, there are around 9.62 crore voters in Bangladesh.