ID cards' date extended again

Expired ID cards issued in January 2002 will remain valid until December after another extension was given through a legal notice issued yesterday.

The ID card will only be renewed in certain instances, such as when a Maltese citizen required it as a travel document or changed the address, the government said.

A similar extension was granted this time last year.

Plans are underway to eventually replace the expired cards with a more sophisticated electronic version. Initially, the government's target was to have the new cards out between the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010. But in November, the government said it was still waiting for a reply from Brussels for EU funding to replace ID cards with electronic ones.

The Labour Party held the extension up as an example of what it said was the country's mediocre leadership. The expired cards were leading to abuse and only revealed the country's inefficiency, the party said.

It referred to the case of a woman who admitted in court last week to falsifying her friend's ID card to take out a bank loan. A serious government would have already taken concrete measures to ensure this did not happen again but, instead of doing so, it simply extended the expired ID cards, the PL said.