The Guyana gov­ern­ment says the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Sin­gle Elec­tron­ic Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Sys­tem (SEIS) will en­hance bor­der con­trol and aid in ad­dress­ing the mi­grant is­sue in the coun­try.

Guyana’s Vice Pres­i­dent, Bhar­rat Jagdeo, said the SEIS will re­sult in every Guyanese na­tion­al re­ceiv­ing an elec­tron­ic iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card (E-ID).

In March 2023, the gov­ern­ment signed a US$35 mil­lion agree­ment with the Ger­man-based com­pa­ny Veri­dos Iden­ti­ty So­lu­tions to de­vel­op the E-ID sys­tem. How­ev­er, the project is fac­ing some de­lays, and ac­cord­ing to Jagdeo, this is due to an in­te­gra­tion glitch.

Nonethe­less, he told the week­ly news con­fer­ence on Thurs­day that every Guyanese will re­ceive this card with­in a year and that it will not serve a sin­gle pur­pose

He said that from air­port clear­ance to bank ac­count ac­cess, every sin­gle ser­vice will be digi­tised, and non-cit­i­zens will be re­quired to ob­tain a res­i­den­cy card to ac­cess these.

“Every­one else, who is non-Guyanese, will have to have a res­i­den­cy card with the same se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures and their bio­met­rics. If you don’t have that, and you’re liv­ing in our coun­try, you would have a hard time open­ing a bank ac­count.

“There would be a pro­hi­bi­tion on you open­ing a bank ac­count with­out that card. Our em­ploy­ers here would have to en­sure that peo­ple have that card,” Jagdeo said.

He told re­porters that this sys­tem will be linked with the Safe Coun­try ini­tia­tive, which has about 3,000 to 4,000 sur­veil­lance cam­eras na­tion­wide.

Through this sys­tem, the gov­ern­ment is en­abling bet­ter track­ing and da­ta col­lec­tion and Jagdeo said once the new dig­i­tal ID card sys­tem is im­ple­ment­ed, all non-cit­i­zens will be re­quired to ob­tain the card with­in a de­fined grace pe­ri­od, and fail­ure to do so will re­sult in sanc­tions.

Jagdeo al­so said that all mi­grants en­ter­ing Guyana will be thor­ough­ly vet­ted by state agen­cies, and that na­tion­al in­tel­li­gence op­er­a­tions ac­tive­ly mon­i­tor po­ten­tial se­cu­ri­ty threats linked to for­eign mi­grants.

He ac­knowl­edged that while Guyanese are con­cerned about the mi­grant sit­u­a­tion, in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing, by its na­ture, should not be plas­tered across so­cial me­dia plat­forms or tra­di­tion­al me­dia.

“And I can as­sure you it’s not on­ly go­ing to be for Venezue­lans, but … the Chines … In­di­ans … and the Africans in our coun­try…. Every­one else who is non-Guyanese, we will know, once the cards are is­sued,” he said.

Jagdeo said that the gov­ern­ment has to act com­pas­sion­ate­ly, as in the past, Guyanese were flock­ing to oth­er coun­tries, es­pe­cial­ly Venezuela, to seek eco­nom­ic refuge. Now, those per­sons with Guyanese roots are re­turn­ing and are el­i­gi­ble for cit­i­zen­ship.

“They can get an ID card or a pass­port im­me­di­ate­ly. That’s the Con­sti­tu­tion of Guyana. The PPP can’t change that, and AP­NU can’t change that. That’s in our supreme law,” he told re­porters. —GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana (CMC)