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2/1/07 - Speed up issuance of national identity card (Kenya)

KENYA is among few developing countries that have successfully implemented registration of persons programme with a sizeable percentage of adults above the age of 18 registered and issued with national identity cards.

The importance of an identity card can not be overemphasized. This is a must document if a citizen is to access services provided by the government and to conduct other transactions where identification for, among others, security and related reasons is required. The ID card is also requisite when it comes to enfranchisement. .

But an ID card is invaluable for forensic purposes too. Since a fingerprint data bank for those registered is maintained, the card similarly helps in the identification of unidentified bodies based on fingerprint records kept at the Registrar of Persons fingerprint Bureau. Similarly the fingerprint records serve as silent witnesses when it comes to crime detection and presentation of evidence before courts of law.

But although we have done comparatively well by African standards, there are lingering concerns that for a country where population density is concentrated around the late teen and early twenty age bracket, a disproportional number of Kenyans above 18 have for some time now been unable to access this important document. The upshot of which is that those trying to find jobs have no chance of securing one. There were, for example, thousands of young men and women who qualified , including by age, to be recruited into the Armed forces, police and Wildlife Services in the recent past but who because of lack of ID were unable to stake their claim.

Democratic credentials

And as alluded to already, one gets automatically disenfranchised if they have no ID card. This is a right a government with any claim to democratic credentials should never wilfully deny a citizen. Recently a group of leaders reading political mischief into what they termed selective registration exercise took the government to task. Perhaps one valid point they made was that in an election year, it behoves the government agency charged with registration of persons to go full throttle to register as many people as is practical. The delay sends a wrong message to sections of the population.

Early this week for example, hundreds of youths held a demonstration at the Principal Registrar’s office in Nairobi, demanding to be issued with identity cards.

Indeed, for the past one year, the department has performed very poorly. Many excuses have been advanced for failure to issue identity cards. Some of the excuses have been lack of either application forms or that the forms procured were not of prescribed standards.

Officially, the explanation to the slump in the registration exercise has been attributed to lack of the right material. But this reason has failed to douse a torrent of cynical questions, including why the tendering procedure for the compliant materials has taken so long and why the procurement process can not be fast tracked.

Are the problems the department is facing due to favouritism in procurement resulting in substandard material or it is due to exclusively technical problems?

There are lots of things the government does well with noble intentions but when they land into the hands of bureaucrats to effect, then something goes very wrong. These are the people who give the government a poor image and which is why the accounting officers responsible must step in and conclusively sort out the matter of identification cards.

When the Youth Fund is released very shortly for example, it is bound to exclude a big number of deserving cases whose only shortfall will be inability to produce an ID card. How will this omission go down with them?

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Article Date: 2/1/2007

Source: Kenya Times

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