Bay Islands ID Card

It is kind of hard to see on this picture but what your looking at is outside our office at about 100 people lined up at 8AM to get into the Zolitur ID office that has opened up under our office.

Here is what is going on. As part of the Free Trade law for the Bay Islands they are trying to ID everyone that is a resident of the bay islands. This is an additional ID than your Honduran Residency or Honduran Citizen ID card. The idea is to know who is living and working in the Bay Islands and limit those non tourist visitors from coming to the island. This will make our island more secure and safe.

So last week they opened up this office and started running some advertisements on local radio that everyone needs to get their ID. When you go in to get it they have 3 computers where they enter your info in the database. They ask where you live, where you were born, what schools you graduated from, how much you weigh. They actually have a scale in there that everyone can see and you get up on it. When they asked Juliette from my office who is 9 months pregnant to get up on the scale she refused and everyone laugh ted it was too funny.

They are asking everyone to prove they have been here or had some business here for 5 years. This is harder than it sounds. If you have a local birth certificate that works. If you have local tax receipts that works (no one pays their local taxes its seems as this is rare). Cindy and I used land documents as part of our proof. I also took the new and sparse office a little mini fridge which was greatly appreciated.

The best and worst part of this is you have to have a copy of both sides of your current ID card. Well guess what they do not have a copy machine in the office and they do not tell you that you need to bring a copy on the advertisements. So we have a new cottage industry in our office making copies for 5 lempira (25 cents).

We had to modify our policy today as yesterday we had too many and very loud people in the office so today they line up outside the door and one at a time they can come in.

We will see if this idea is executed or if it goes the way of the gas stickers.

Oh the good news is they are not making the cards on site. We all get to line up again in the future to pick them up.