Red Tape Hot Box on ID cards (again)
In response to my recent articles on ID cards and the idiocy associated with them, I was informed of a very interesting issue, which set me pondering. One of my readers, who has been a Polish citizen for four years, claims he is not entitled to vote. Here, to vote you need a dowód osobisty (ID card). However, to get one of these, you need a registered residence, or so-called stałe zameldowanie. To get one of these, your newly-built house needs an odbiór (another of those "special" words which doesn't have a direct translation into English), a procedure involving a check of your house to certify that it has been built according to the building law, so that the municipality can then decide that it's fit to live in. Anyway, my correspondent's house is - he and his family moved into it a year ago - yet the house still has a couple of small defects that the developer needs to repair - at her cost - before the owner can obtain his odbiór.
Which leaves the reader and his family waiting without stałe zameldowanie, without ID cards, and hence without the right to vote. Of course, the situation is farcical; the reader's right to vote in the upcoming referendum on joining the European Union depends on whether or not the developer corrects one or two minor defects in his house.
So once again we find that the ID card is the only valid document which our system recognises. Why can't we vote without one, and just show our passports or driving licences instead? The entire system of zameldowanie and dowody needs to be scrapped. No one has bothered to ask what purpose these documents serve or what value they add to the lives of the citizens. Perhaps we'll live long enough to see the country's Constitutional Tribunal do something about it, and I'll live long enough to thank our reader for telling me about his case.
Red tape bugging you? Tell Mateusz about it at mdembinski@wbj.pl.
Which leaves the reader and his family waiting without stałe zameldowanie, without ID cards, and hence without the right to vote. Of course, the situation is farcical; the reader's right to vote in the upcoming referendum on joining the European Union depends on whether or not the developer corrects one or two minor defects in his house.
So once again we find that the ID card is the only valid document which our system recognises. Why can't we vote without one, and just show our passports or driving licences instead? The entire system of zameldowanie and dowody needs to be scrapped. No one has bothered to ask what purpose these documents serve or what value they add to the lives of the citizens. Perhaps we'll live long enough to see the country's Constitutional Tribunal do something about it, and I'll live long enough to thank our reader for telling me about his case.
Red tape bugging you? Tell Mateusz about it at mdembinski@wbj.pl.
