NewsWhore
01-30-2009, 06:40 PM
Close to 400,000 people in the Dominican Republic do not have identity documents. A new World Bank and Central Electoral Board (JCE) program seeks to document these individuals over a four-year period. The World Bank will be providing US$19.2 million in funds for this purpose. The program involves US$2.6 million in co-funding from the Dominican government.
The plan is to reduce the number of heads of household who do not have ID cards and thus cannot benefit from the governmental welfare programs targeted at the poorest from 28% to 10%. In the DR, an ID card is essential to for entering secondary education, obtaining access to health services, property, banking and legal services.
There has been progress, since a study showed that in 2005 there were 600,000 people without identification.
Speaking at an event announcing the program, JCE president Julio Cesar Castanos Guzman said that the program would "turn a happy page in the history of the DR because we will bring people who were legally dead back to life."
In the DR the problem is the result of delays in implementing government mechanisms that would allow any child born at a public hospital to automatically be issued an ID. The program has been gradually implemented. In the DR, if a parent does not declare the child within 30 days of birth, the late declaration procedure becomes very tedious and time consuming and many parents just don't do it.
More... (http://www.dr1.com/index.html#5)
The plan is to reduce the number of heads of household who do not have ID cards and thus cannot benefit from the governmental welfare programs targeted at the poorest from 28% to 10%. In the DR, an ID card is essential to for entering secondary education, obtaining access to health services, property, banking and legal services.
There has been progress, since a study showed that in 2005 there were 600,000 people without identification.
Speaking at an event announcing the program, JCE president Julio Cesar Castanos Guzman said that the program would "turn a happy page in the history of the DR because we will bring people who were legally dead back to life."
In the DR the problem is the result of delays in implementing government mechanisms that would allow any child born at a public hospital to automatically be issued an ID. The program has been gradually implemented. In the DR, if a parent does not declare the child within 30 days of birth, the late declaration procedure becomes very tedious and time consuming and many parents just don't do it.
More... (http://www.dr1.com/index.html#5)