IDs offered free to certain groups

TIRANA, March 30 – Albanian authorities decided in an effort to push for the population to apply for the new identity cards that they would be offered for free to invalids and students.
Following a request from the political opposition to give the cards for free to all the persons not having a passport (so that they would be able to vote at the parliamentary elections of June 28) the Ministry of the Interior decided to give them for free only to those two groups and also to reduce their price to pensioners.
At the same time the whole month of April would be only for hundreds of thousands of Albanians who do not have a passport. Officially they are 730,000 but the opposition says there could be up to more than 900,000 and have accused the government of the Democratic Party in using this effort to manipulate the general polls. More than 150,000 of them have already applied.
New IDs have become a hot political issue.
The opposition says the government is not keeping its promise and may also try to use such a tool as a way of manipulating the polls.
The government says the process is in line with their plan and they are convinced that Albanians will have their new IDs in time for the election.