New IDs at the center of political fight

TIRANA, April 15 – The opposition Socialist party said that unless the government would urgently make a radical move within this month to resolve equipping all Albanians with new identity cards, then the whole process would fail and that would also put the upcoming parliamentary elections in danger.
The Government, offers more financial assistance and flexibility trying to urge Albanians to apply for the new IDs.
Damian Gjiknuri of the Socialist party said that the governmental schemes were only creating confusion and insisted that the new IDs should be given free-of-charge to those people who do not possess passports.
New IDs or the passports are the only valid documents Albanians may use to vote at the June 28th parliamentary polls. There are officially 730,000 Albanians without a passport and out of them only about a third have applied for new IDs.
The month of April has been left only to those without passports.
Prime Minister Sali Berisha asked pensioners to go and apply or they would not be able to get their pension. The government offered a 1,000 lek assistance at a time when the new IDs cost 1,200 lek.
Students were also told to apply or they would not be allowed to enter their exams. They would also pay only 200 lek for the new IDs.
Some other groups like the disabled and those having social assistance will get it for free.
The opposition insists that the drop in price does not resolve the completion process.
The premier criticized the opposition for not calling on voters to apply for the new IDs.
Meanwhile, officially some half million Albanians have already applied and four-fifth of them have already received the new IDs, according to the interior ministry.
That is considerably low compared to the government forecast of issuing 15-20,000 new IDs a day, thus completing the whole population. That seems far away.
The application offices also remain open over weekends and their working hours are until 6 p.m. local time.