Joint Communique on ID Cards

25.03.2016

With the looming up of the threatening deadline of 31st March for everyone to have submitted to the ID Card procedures, we the undersigned, wish to make public our demands:

 1. That the deadline once again be extended. Past deadlines have been extended because of Court Cases against the card. The Privy Council has not yet heard the case before it. In any case the DPP has announced that he is unlikely to prosecute until “final judgment”.

2. That the State immediately disable the electronic chip in all the cards. This will respect the Court judgments and the Alliance Lepep program, by doing away with the need to store fingerprints temporarily in the central database, as well as permanently on the cards, which are, of course, property of the State.

3.  That the State at once destroys the photographs in the Central Database, in order to respect its own promises and the Supreme Court judgments; clearly the photographs stored can be used for one-to-many searches, which are declared illegal by the Supreme Court.

4. That the State at once amends the law so that the ID Card is no longer compulsory, neither to have, nor to produce. And that any identity document/s can be used where necessary. There is precedent for this in the most important of all procedures i.e. for voting in the last general elections, as well as subsequently in the municipal elections.

5. That the repressive legal framework at once be revoked. This has been delayed over 15 months.

 Name                                                                          Organization                                     

 Vinod Seegum                                                            Confederation of Independent Trade unions(CITU)

Narendranath Gopee                                                   Federation of Civil Service and Other unions (FCSOU)

Atma Shanto                                                               Federation des Travailleurs Unis (FTU)

Reaz Chuttoo                                                              Confederation des Travailleurs du Secteur Prive (CTSP)

Rajni Lallah                                                                 Muvman Liberasyon Fam (MLF)

Norman Tambanivoul                                                 Centre Idriss Goomany

Jayen Chellum                                                             Association des Consommateurs de L’Ile Maurice (ACIM)

Lindsey Collen                                                            LALIT

24 march 2016