The 6,500-odd state government employees will soon get new identity cards.

Their existing cards, with white background, will be replaced with ones with yellow and red background.

“The existing employee ID cards are old and worn-out. In many cases, it is difficult to make out what is written,” said a senior official at Writers’ Buildings.

Some retired employees had been taking advantage of the fact that the words on their ID cards were illegible, said a source at the state secretariat.

The red laminated cards will be given to officials of the ranks between section officer and special secretary (non-IAS). The yellow cards will be issued to Group D and Group C staff.

Visitors to Writers’ Buildings will be provided new visitor’s slips. The slip will be of different colour on different days of the week.

“Monitoring visitors at Writers’ has become difficult as their number has gone up considerably in the past two months. People are visiting the state secretariat with slips issued days back,” said S.S. Pradhan, assistant secretary, department of home political (main).

The government has placed orders for 50,000 red and 1.5 lakh yellow cards. The cards will be handed over to the employees at Writers’ by August 15. In addition to personal information, an employee’s blood group and contact number will be mentioned on the new cards.