One of the country’s more prominent umbrella church groups has expressed concern about the government’s current rollout of the National Identification System (NIDS) on the basis that it could expose citizens to data breaches and cyber attacks.
The Jamaica Evangelical Alliance (JEA), headed by Bishop Dr Alvin Bailey, said while members share varying views of the digital ID, the general consensus is that there is very little confidence in the government’s ability to keep people’s data safe at this time.
“Of course, [there are] different perspectives of the whole matter, but then in Jamaica, where there is very little confidence that there is security and that person’s security and identity can be kept confidential, it remains a cause for much scepticism and apprehension,” said the senior pastor of the Holiness Christian Church in Portmore, St Catherine.
“So the government initiative has not yet gained the confidence of the church at large, and we have had reason to see the number of institutions and agencies that are of concern and the extent to which people’s privacy and people’s data are being made vulnerable,” he said.
Although the government has promised that the national ID will be safe, several companies in Jamaica have experienced cyber attacks in recent months, resulting in serious data breaches. According to the latest Fortinet Global Threat Landscape report, Jamaica recorded more than 34 million cyberattack attempts in the first six months of 2025. Attackers are increasingly targeting sectors such as manufacturing, telecommunications, healthcare, and financial services. Cybercriminals have been busy identifying weak points they can exploit, often using AI-enabled tools to speed up attacks and increase their effectiveness.
The NIDS has been getting fierce pushback from the church community, as some feel it will be used eventually by a one-world government to control citizens globally. The government’s decision to appoint Bishop Conrad Pitkin, a churchman, as the chair of the National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA), does not appear to be easing the general scepticism. NIRA is responsible for the layered rollout and management of NIDS. Fellow churchman and current general secretary for the Jamaica Council of Churches (JCC), Reverend Newton Dixon is the chair of NIRA’s public relations and marketing committee. He also represents the Jamaica Umbrella Group of Churches on the board.
Bishop Dr. Bailey noted that digital IDs have become a global phenomenon, but he remains distrustful of Jamaica’s efforts to implement this system.
“The church has concerns, and we personally don’t think that the government has reached a level where full confidence can be exercised or given to them at the stage in which they are. It is presently a work in progress, and [the] degree of caution is extremely high,” he said.
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer continues to face intense backlash following his September 25th announcement of plans to introduce new legislation that will require every adult in the UK to own a form of government-issued digital ID. The ID would be mandatory for anyone hoping to work in the UK. A petition was established in response to the announcement. It received almost three million signatures in one week as people expressed privacy concerns.
The Jamaican government has insisted that the NIDS will not be mandatory, but concerns have been expressed that citizens will likely be forced to get it if it becomes a requirement to do transactions with banks and other institutions. Bishop Dr. Bailey said any effort to make this national ID mandatory will receive pushbackfrom the church.
“We will strongly oppose it if the government intends to make it mandatory or force it down the throats of the church and Christians in Jamaica,” he insisted.
The NIDS is being implemented by the Office of the Prime Minister, with funding from the Government and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). The initial span of the project was from February 2018 to February 2024; however, it is now slated to end in February 2026. The project had an initial estimated cost of $8.8 billion, with about $8.5 billion coming from an IDB loan. Total expenditure has amounted to over $6 billion so far.
The United Nations and international financial institutions have been pushing for a worldwide electronic ID, which they thought would have been a reality in 2020; however, Jamaica suffered a setback in 2019 when the Constitutional Court struck down the NIDS Act on the basis that it breached the rights of Jamaicans to privacy as guaranteed by the Constitution.
