Tara Clivio

The average wallet has four to possibly eight slots for cards. As Jamaicans we have an NIS card, a TRN card, a voters ID, a driver's licence, and now we are going have a National ID card. If you are lucky enough to have a health insurance card, this leaves very little space for credit cards, and this is a problem.

At times I feel somewhat burdened by life in Jamaica. We have a very cumbersome and complicated bureaucracy and an equally tiresome tax regime; the added weight to my wallet that is not as a result of any increase in cash is bound only to add to the weight on my shoulders!

Clearly, the intention of this new identity card is not to dislocate my vertebrae but, as Prime Minister Golding put it, make Jamaica more manageable. The prime minister made this in reference to crime, but for the life of me I cannot see how another card is going to help fight crime. Criminals don't get TRN numbers but buy tax compliance certificates, they are not NIS contributors and they buy their driver's licence, as they do a passport. So one can only assume they will not rush out and get a national ID card. If Prime Minister Golding wants Jamaica more manageable, then he must set himself the difficult task of managing it!

Knight is rusty armour

The prime minister has alluded to living up to his promise of simplifying the tax regime, and this possibly could be the silver lining of this cloud. The one thing that could endear me to the idea of lining up in a government office to take pictures and produce documents and invariably be scowled at, would be the fact that this new 'social security' number would replace my TRN, NIS numbers and represent one tax. However, I feel the biggest obstacle to a single tax is that people will be outraged at how much tax they are really paying when it is added all up. The idea of working every other day for the government might not go down so well with the majority, never mind that the minority has been doing it for a long time.

Sword

So we have waited for some time for our knight in shining armour to come and save us, to bring change. He has come up riding on his stallion but instead of wielding a shinning sword, he waves a 2"x4" laminated ID card. Just a tad disappointing. Yet, if this card represents a single tax, which in turn represents a massive reduction in bureaucracy, a considerable cut in the size of government, a reduction in the duplication of roles and administration of essentially the same process, a major time saver for employers, an effective way of identifying people and finding them when you need them, and fewer cards in my wallet, well then, this card is looking a lot more like a sword rather than just another piece of plastic.