The extra fees, which can reach several thousand gourdes, are set by agents of the National Identification Office (ONI), according to half a dozen interviews collected by AyiboPost
Citizens are being charged « irregular » fees to obtain or reprint their Single National Identification Card in Port-au-Prince and certain provincial towns.
These fees, which can amount to several thousand gourdes, are set by agents of the National Identification Office (ONI), according to half a dozen interviews collected by AyiboPost.
This practice is contrary to the provisions on the « free issue », until now, of the single national identification card.
In November 2023, Exil Sondes misplaced his card near the town of Pétion-ville. The 26-year-old man, who lives in Morne Hercule, a district of Pétion-ville, rushed to pay for a lost card certificate from the police station in his town of residence for 250 gourdes.
Read also: In Haiti, not carrying an identity document is a violation of the law.
After more than three months of waiting and unsuccessful attempts with a racketeer, Sondes told AyiboPost that an ONI agent assigned to a center in Kenscoff finally allowed him to obtain the CINU in exchange for a financial compensation of 5,000 gourdes, on December 26, 2024.
However, according to Sondes, three days earlier, this rapid outcome seemed unlikely: « In this same ONI office in Kenscoff, when I went there three days earlier, the same agent with whom I subsequently contracted had informed me that a duplication of my identity card on the ONI system made it impossible to print it, » he explained to AyiboPost.
Long before the prodigious power of money made it easier for him to reprint his card, Sondes tells AyiboPost that his days were tossed between anxiety and uncertainty.
Sondes told AyiboPost that an ONI agent assigned to a center in Kenscoff finally allowed him to obtain the CINU in exchange for a financial compensation of 5,000 gourdes, on December 26, 2024.
Multiple gang attacks force thousands of people to flee their homes.
Since at least April 2024, citizens unable to identify themselves have been victims of the « bwa kale » movement or beaten up in Port-au-Prince and other parts of the country.
« Because of the climate of insecurity and the identity checkpoints carried out by the brigadiers, I had reduced my travel perimeter to my commune of residence, » explains Sondes, who adds that he has taken to carrying around during his travels the official exam sheet for the 9th year of basic education, his original birth certificate and a copy of his parents’ CINU.
These documents also prevented Sondes from falling victim to the bwa kale in October 2024. During a search near Thomassaint 48, police officers were preparing to subject him to the burning rubber torture. But they ultimately gave up when they realized that, among the documents he was carrying, only the CINU was missing.
Other citizens, deprived – for various reasons – of their identity cards, report to AyiboPost instances of irregular billing for their issuance or reprinting, in a context of generalized insecurity where people who do not have them are sometimes identified as gang members.
Apdon Desamours, originally from the commune of Mombin-Crochu in the northeast of the country, has lived in Ouanaminthe for around ten years.
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Having lost his identification card in August 2021—it had slipped out of his back pants pocket while he was riding a motorcycle—Desamours obtained a certificate of loss from a police station in Ouanaminthe that same week. He then made multiple appointments and calls to the ONI switchboard for more than three years, in vain, in an attempt to recover it.
Having emigrated to the Dominican Republic where he has been living since November 2023, Desamours tells AyiboPost that he paid 3,500 gourdes in vain to an ONI official, well-known in Ouanaminthe, who said he could help him obtain the card « more quickly ».
« I paid this amount in cash. But, each time, the officer alleged that my CINU had not yet been issued when I later asked him for an account, » he told AyiboPost.
The absence of this essential piece has already had considerable repercussions for Desamours.
According to the man, in August 2021, the Industrial Development Company (CODEVI) refused to hire him because his identity card was missing from his application.
In addition, six thousand gourdes have also remained blocked in his UNIBANK savings account since 2021, due to lack of his identification card to recover them.
Several ONI agents at a center in Croix-des-Bouquets asked him to « negotiate » with them for the rapid reprinting of his identity card, taken by bandits during a robbery that occurred in the same town in 2022.
The young man explained that he rejected the offer because he found it « insane to pay for a document that the State provided for free, » he testified.
In 2025, in an ONI center in Tabarre, potential racketeers who said they « had relations with ONI officers » told Jean they could help him get his identity card reprinted, in exchange for compensation of 2,500 gourdes.
Jean once again refused the proposal.
To this day, he does not have his unique national identification card.
The young man explained that he rejected the offer because he found it « insane to pay for a document that the State provided for free. »
A decree adopted by former President Jovenel Moïse in the Council of Ministers on April 19, 2017, established the CINU to replace the National Identification Card (CIN).
Yes, the decree of 2005 enshrined in its article 3 the free issue of the first CIN, that of 2017, currently in force, mentions the possibility of a contribution – if legally required – for printing or renewing the CINU, fixed in this case by the budgetary law.
But, for Reynaldo Camilus, technical director of the ONI, « for reasons of facilitating voting, the first printing or renewal of the single national identity card is currently free. »
« ONI officials, » Camilus emphasizes, « do not have the right to charge fees for issuing the CINU. »
Furthermore, he continues, « the National Office of National Identification does not have a bank account, and the ONI’s collections should go through the General Directorate of Taxes (DGI). Therefore, this is a practice that possibly involves racketeers, not the institution. »
These irregular billings often penalize economically vulnerable people.
Many citizens see their cases drag on for several months, or even years, in the ONI system.
In 2017, the Haitian government signed a $27 million contract with the German firm DERMALOG to provide the population with biometric identification cards.
An article from AyiboPost published in 2019, as well as several investigative reports, have raised against this contract breaches of Haitian legal and administrative orthodoxy, against a backdrop of widespread suspicions of corruption.
Several years after the signing of this contract, complaints about the quality of DERMALOG cards have fueled public discussions.
Several citizens have reported to AyiboPost that they have just received cards that are completely damaged, raising questions about the quality of the materials used in their composition.
Several damaged identification cards received by AyiboPost as part of this work attest to the problem.
Very active on social media, agronomist Marc-Donald Vincent mobilized several hundred people at the beginning of May through an online challenge aimed at alerting the ONI to the poor quality of the single national identification cards.
Contacted by AyiboPost, Vincent claims to have launched this initiative after noticing that institutions were refusing services to members of the population because of the damaged state of their cards, mainly made of polycarbonate and whose lifespan has nevertheless been estimated at ten years.
Vincent says he himself almost had a withdrawal from the Banque Nationale de Crédit refused during the month of April 2025 because of the damage to this identity document.
The difficulties in recovering their unique national identification card are forcing some people to resort to counterfeiting.
Jean is one of the people who has used this alternative since 2023, after unsuccessful efforts to have his card reprinted with the ONI and the online identity document request platform (DELIDOC).
« I made myself a fake identity card, with which I sometimes received money transfers from abroad, made transactions via MonCash, among other things, » he confided to AyiboPost, highlighting the surgical meticulousness in the mounting of this fake card, strangely reminiscent of the original, even if it lacks the electronic chip.
Read also: The history of the identity card in Haiti is closely linked to elections
« I slipped someone a thousand gourdes for this task, » reveals Jean, who says he knows other people who also resort to this alternative as a last resort.
« Counterfeiting CINU cards is impossible, » Reynaldo Camilus of the ONI told AyiboPost. « These cards are extremely sophisticated and equipped with electronic chips that only the government possesses. »
In August 2024, the Haitian National Police arrested two Nigerian nationals, Madukanze Kenneth and Henry Peter, in the southeast of the country. They were in possession of fake Haitian national identification cards.
By: Junior Legrand
Cover | The photo of Marc-Donald Vincent’s damaged national unique identification card. Photo: Marc-Donald Vincent.
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