Dar es Salaam — Just days after US President George Bush gave Tanzania a vote of confidence "for not being corrupt", fresh revelations to the contrary are butressing the widely held view that the country is "choking silently" with stinking fraud.

Fears are emerging to the effect that the 36-year old Tanzania National Identity Cards multibillion project may plunge the country into another major scandal if bold steps are not taken to stem a crisis now.

Insider sources have said there are indicators that the reasons for the delay of commissioning the project are similar to those in the Richmond and the Bank of Tanzania (BoT) scandals and involve Tanzania's "big fish".

This on and off project was first discussed in parliament in 1972 leading to the passing in of the 1972 National Identification and Citizenship Act followed by the 1986 Registration and Identification of Persons Act.

By then budgeting constraints and priorities were the main reason for the project's failure to take off. This project has gone through the watch of about 20 ministers at the ministry of Home Affairs, but all ended up with no tangible decisions on its implementation.

The $176 million (about Tsh 200 billion) Tanzania National Identity Cards Project has stalled for decades now with documents, meetings, tendering moving from one office to the other, and now it has eventually attracted the international community, including the World Bank.

The tendering process has also entered the courts of law, which has also been another hitch for the speedy and smooth processing of the project.

Sources say, the key players at the decision making stage in the project are the Prime Minister's Office and the Ministry of Home Affairs while businessmen and the World Bank have also joined the relay as to how the project should be managed.

The dilly-dallying, well placed government sources say, has been caused by personal interests by government officials from the Prime Minister's office, Ministry of Home Affairs, a prominent businessman who's close to the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) and a senior Bank of Tanzania official.

Apart from the tendering process, now it has emerged another hitch is the technology to be applied. While, the consultants hired by the government propose the use of smart card technology, the World Bank, through its development specialist is talking of barcode technology.

Michael Wong, the World Bank Private Sector Development Specialist has it that "lack of nationwide e-Government infrastructure and a national database would make it difficult to implement Tanzania National ID project."

According to Wong, the ID system Tanzania government is proposing is "too complex and too technologically sophisticated for Tanzania and that it has never been successfully implemented or deployed anywhere in Africa or Asia."

However, those supporting the smartcard technology argue that that is a secure tamper-proof multi-purpose identity card and that Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Morroco, UAE and Egypt have programmes based on smartcard technology.

They also argue that the per capita cost estimates for the Tanzania National ID programme are in line with and in many cases much lower than in other countries.

They argue that barcode technology is unsuitable for implementing a national ID system and that by the time the last ID card is issued, the technology is already obsolete and the system has to be dismantled and replaced by another modern ID system.

distinguishes smartcard technology from other older and soon-to-be obsolete technologies, they say, is that it contains an embedded microchip or microcontroller that can not only hold huge amount of records including biometric data.

The Tanzania cabinet through the then minister for Home Affairs Joseph Mungai opted for smart card technology. Also with programmability, it is possible to upgrade some of the features and functions supported on the smartcard as standards evolve, new services are developed and enhanced security protocols are introduced.