Seven Vietnamese citizens have been found illegally carrying Cambodian identification cards, and Phnom Penh Governor Chea Sophara is blaming municipal employees.
“We knew the [commune] officials had colluded with those people, and we let them do it so that we will have the evidence,” Chea Sophara said Wednesday. He said three officials have been warned, “and we will remove a [commune] chief if he has mistakenly given approval to two foreigners.”
He also offered a $100 reward to anyone who provides information about ID fraud.
The Ministry of Interior campaign to provide new ID cards to Cambodians began in Phnom Penh six months ago. So far only 35,000 of the estimated 530,000 residents over the age of 18 have received the cards, according to Phnom Penh Cabinet Chief Man Chhoeun.
Man Chhoeun pointed out the mix of people in the city makes the process more difficult than in the countryside, where a villager might well know every other resident and be able to verify their identity accurately.
Chea Sophara is also slowing down the process on purpose. Not willing to trust scanned versions of his signature, he plans on signing every ID card himself, even though he admits it would only take a week to do all the cards with a scanner.
“I try to sign about 400 per night, usually between 11 pm and 1 am,” he said.
Students and government officials will soon be receiving their ID cards. Processing for these groups should go faster because they tend to have more identification proof than most citizens and are also known to their peers.
A national commission is currently assessing the identification card process.
The new ID system stores each person’s photo and thumbprint in a central database, in addition to generating a plastic ID card that is good for 10 years. Personal identification in Cambodia is notoriously unreliable, with forged documents readily available. Officials hope the new IDs will help to regulate this.
