It is good news that progress is finally been made on Samoa’s National Identification Project (NIP). The ID card that will be issued at the completion of the project is supposed to replace the voter ID and can be used as a health or medical ID card.

An article (National ID coming soon) in yesterday’s edition of the Weekend Observer revealed details of the progress the current Government is making on the project. Prime Minister, Fiamē Naomi Mataʻafa confirmed during a recent press conference that the bill is now ready to be tabled in the Parliament at its next sitting.

When the Parliament sat in March this year, the Minister of Women, Community and Social Development, Leota Laki Lamositele urged the Attorney General's Office to fast-track the completion of the NIP so the Samoa Bureau of Statistics (SBS) could move to the next phase of the project. 

"It is anticipated that the bill will go into Parliament mid-year, and once the bill is passed in Parliament, all the other milestones will be executed," Leota said.  

When Minister Leota gave the Parliament the update on the NIP, the Opposition Leader, Lauofo Pierre Lauofo welcomed the update and commended the SBS for the progress in the project. 

"This project is very important as it can keep accurate information about each individual and be useful for national purposes," Lauofo said in March this year.

However, the fact that it took the project three years to get to this stage – after SAT$12 million in public funding was expended on the project in 2020 during the term of the former Administration – is mindboggling. How can you spend $12 million in public funds on a project which took three years to complete? 

We know that a measles epidemic towards the end of 2019 and the COVID-19 pandemic that followed in early 2020 had a direct impact on the implementation of the previous Samoa government’s policies. It is likely that the NIP was one of the many multimillion-tala projects that could have been affected.

However, looking through our own coverage of the former Administration’s national census program three years ago, we know that the $12 million was the total cost of a government plan at that time to give $50 to every Samoan citizen who registered for the census identification scheme.

And the numbers don’t add up because the preliminary count of Samoa’s total population, based on data that came out from the Population and Housing Census 2021, put the country’s total population at 200,010. If every single Samoan citizen was given $50 when the census was done back then, the total amount that should have been paid out at that time would have come down to $10,000,500. Take away that cost of $10,000,500 from the $12,000,000 budgeted and you are left with $1,999,500 in surplus funding. What happened to the $1,999,500? Where that $1,999,500 in surplus funding went remains a mystery to this very day. 

At that time the $12 million funding came out from the former government’s Phase II Stimulus Package, which was part of the national budget, and was presented to the Parliament towards the end of May 2020. The total cost of the measures, in a bid to kick start Samoa’s economy after the pandemic at that time, was $83 million. In fact, this month marks three years since the former government revealed the $12 million expenditure and its link to the census identification scheme in 2020. 

We understand the $12 million funding (and the whereabouts of the $1,999,500 in surplus funding) are among multimillion tala projects from the term of the former Administration that the current Government has selected to undergo a forensic audit. The logic behind that decision is clear.

Perhaps, one lesson to take away from the NIP for the current Government is the need for clear project management timelines on the inception and conclusion dates. This ensures that there is full transparency for the benefit of the people.

Nonetheless, as the leaders emphasised in the House in March this year, there are numerous benefits that should come out of this project. But implementation in its preliminary stage was surrounded by secrecy and questions remain over how the $12 million was disbursed.