As the process to provide voters with national IDs with 10-digit unique number is underway across the country, Bangladesh is now moving to bring under-18 citizens into a similar scheme.

According to the proposed plan, the office of the Registrar General of Birth and Death Registration will assign a 10-digit ID number for citizens up to 10 years old while for citizens between 11 and 17 years old the Election Commission, which now handles the process for voters, will be responsible.

It has been proposed that once a citizen is above 10 years old, his or her biometric details will be included in the system with options to update information like, education, marital status etc.

Currently several government agencies like the bureau of statistics, health department and the local government division have its own process to register citizens for their own programmes.

The new initiative aims to streamline the whole process and introduce a single ID to access all citizen services like obtaining licences, bank loans, taxation, legal processes as well as emigration.

The Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) wing supervised by the Cabinet Division is leading the process.

On Aug 30, it held a meeting with concerned government agencies.

“The inter-ministerial meeting decided to expedite the process,” Abdul Baten, the director (operations) of Election Commission’s registration wing, told Bangla Tribune.

However, it was yet to decide who will be in charge of the central data system, Baten who attended the Aug 30 meeting as a representative of the EC said.

Secretary (Coordination & Reforms) NM Zeaul Alam of the Cabinet division said that the new 10-digit number assigned to the voters will be their unique ID numbers.

“The non-voter citizens will be also assigned 10-digit ID number and the existing 17-digit birth registration ID will be changed to a 10-digit one,“ he told Bangla Tribune.