Citizen ID Cards and driving licenses in Vietnam are two types of personal identification papers that will soon undergo significant changes. These changes aim to facilitate quick and efficient management. However, there remain some issues.
Article table of contents
Vietnam: Upcoming changes to personal identification papers (Illustrative photo)
1. Renewal of driving license and citizen ID card:
- Chip-based citizen ID card:
This content was proposed by the Ministry of Public Security during the discussion meeting on the draft Law on Residence (amended) by the Standing Committee of the National Assembly of Vietnam. It is expected to issue the chip-based citizen ID cards to the public by the end of 2020. On this basis, on September 3, 2020, the Prime Minister of Vietnam issued Decision 1368/QD-TTg approving the investment guidelines for the project of producing, issuing, and managing citizen ID cards, including investments in infrastructure; biometric recognition systems, servers, workstations, peripheral devices, storage devices, and security devices; investment in commercial software and application software. The total investment for this project is more than 2.696 trillion VND funded from the state budget.
- Driving license with 12 points:
The Ministry of Public Security proposed this in the Draft Law on Ensuring Road Traffic Order and Safety. The driving license will have 12 points per year, and points will be deducted when the driver violates laws on road traffic order and safety. Data on the driver's deducted points will be updated in the database system immediately after the penalty comes into effect. The Government of Vietnam agreed with this proposal at Resolution 123/NQ-CP 2020 in the meeting on law-making of the Government of Vietnam in August.
2. Some shortcomings and obstacles:
- For chip-based citizen ID cards:
The new citizen ID card has many integrated benefits such as storing various documents and preventing forgery, and the chip's cost is cheap and manufactured by domestic enterprises. Thus, with the chip-based citizen ID card, citizens only need to carry this card for transactions and procedures, avoiding cumbersome other documents.
However, the implementation of this new policy faces many shortcomings, especially the need to re-issue citizen ID cards that have just been issued. The issuance of chip-based citizen ID cards has been synchronized nationwide and chip-based citizen ID cards have been issued in 16 provinces and cities with 16 million identification numbers. Therefore, when applying chip-based citizen ID cards, many people who have just received chip-based citizen ID cards will need to replace them with chip-based citizen ID cards, causing waste to the state budget.
- For driving license:
The Ministry of Public Security has anticipated the corresponding points to be deducted per violation, for instance, running a red light may result in a deduction of up to 6 points. Thus, a driver needs to commit this violation only twice to lose all points. Hence, with such strict regulations, this proposal aims to maximally raise the awareness of the public when participating in traffic and drastically reduce violations.
However, under section 4 of Resolution 123/NQ-CP, the driver has to retake the driving license test if all points are deducted within a year. If not all points are deducted, 12 points will be restored for the following year or points will be added if no violations occur within a year." So, will the points be accumulated for the following year if a person does not commit any traffic violations within the year? Based on the meaning of this statement, the answer is yes, and the driving license could reach up to 24 points after a year without traffic violations. Additionally, the negative conduct of some Traffic Police officers is also a concerning issue.
See more details at:
- Resolution 123/NQ-CP effective from August 31, 2020.
- Decision 1368/QD-TTg effective from September 3, 2020.
Nguyen Phu
