The Gambia will from this month, January, 2016 return to the old National Identity Cards, months after the country’s Immigration Department stopped issuing biometric ID Cards to Gambians and Non-Gambians. Sources close to the Immigration Department has indicated that the Government of the Gambia through the Ministry of Interior was unable to convince Pristine Consulting to continue running the costly Gambia Biometric Identity System (GAMBIS), which was launched in August, 2009 despite criticism analysts that The Gambia wasn’t ready financial and technically for such an ambitious project.
The issue between The Gambia Government and Pristine started in the first quarter of 2015 when Pristine Consulting made frantic efforts to recover more than One Million Dollars (39 million Dalasi) owed to the company over the years by The Jammeh regime as part of the GAMBIS project partnership.
The partnership was in such a way that Pristine Company was pre-financing the ordering of materials, production of the biometric identifications and maintenance of the system. In return Gambia government was to occasionally remit the incurred costs and part of the proceeds to the company, which government has failed to do regularly over the years accruing the huge debt. Pristine has since insisted that The Jammeh regime must pay the over 1 million dollar accumulated amount before they can continue the partnership. Unable to pay the money due to the country’s struggling economy, the Immigration Department could not for several months issue Identification cards and driving licenses and yet ask people to pay the fees. Receipts were given after payments with an excuse that the “Machine has a Problem but will be fix soon”.
The Gambia Biometric Identity System (GAMBIS) project was intended to be an integrated system in which Government will capture biometric details for all citizens and aliens in the country such as National Identity Card, Residential Permit and Driving Licenses. If it was successful, the project was to include passports and others such as birth, death and marriage certificates.
Cognizant that Pristine Consulting will no longer be spending money to order materials unless paid what is owed to them, the Interior Ministry through the Immigration has reintroduce the old laminated ID card and through the Police Force, the older small booklet type of the Driving License.
