NIDS would have helped
Published:Sunday | May 17, 2020 | 8:44 AM
THE EDITOR, Madam:
“WHY CAN’T vehicle registration be renewed online?”
That’s the question asked by Dr Rory Dixon, senior medical officer, Sir John Golding Rehabilitation Centre, in his letter to The Gleaner on Tuesday, May 5.
The first paragraph of the piece goes like this:
“I arrived at the Constant Spring tax office at 6:05 a.m. on Monday, May 4, to renew my vehicle registration. At that hour, there were already 30 persons ahead of me. Persons related horror stories of spending up to five hours in the line to perform a five-minute transaction.”
He then went on to recount the asinine, unnecessary processes that one has to endure in Jamaica to accomplish a five-minute transaction. He lamented how these processes often take up the entire day of Jamaican citizens’ time.
How many times have I brought this to my people’s attention, in one form or the other, trying to illustrate the pressing need for an information infrastructure whose genesis lies in NIDS (National Identification System)?
How many times have I been excoriated as some strange communist or totalitarian seeking to abridge Jamaican citizens’ freedoms?
How many times have I painstakingly illustrate its potential positive impact on crime, economic growth, and the overall standard of living of our people?
How many times do I have to respectfully call out our primitive leaders, like Chief Justice Bryan Sykes and his band of merry men and women?
How many times do I have to deal with the same stupid refrain: ‘Mark of the beast’, ‘Revelations’, ‘privacy rights’, ‘I’m not a criminal’, ‘one world government’, ‘new world order’.
How many times?
Shake my head.
Paul Haye