National IDs for students to be issued next month

By Joanita Tushabe and Innocent Anguyo

THE Education Ministry will start issuing new standardized national Identity Cards (IDs) for students in pre-primary, primary, secondary and technical schools next month.

Speaking to New Vision in an exclusive interview at Ministry of Education headquarters on Monday, Ismail Mulindwa, the Assistant Commissioner in the Private Schools department said institutions across the country have already been directed to gather information from their students aged below 16.

The ministry of internal affairs is in the process of issuing National Identity Cards to all citizens above the age of 16 years. 

Noting that the issuance of the IDs was long overdue, Mulindwa said government is already undertaking the process of procuring a supplier, with a firm having already submitted a draft.

A meeting meant to identify a supplier, establish the price and select security features for the IDs scheduled for Monday, however had not taken place by press time.

“All schools will then procure the IDs from that one identified supplier for the purposes of ensuring standard across the board. The IDs will be plastic and water proof within cover; and are most likely going to be machine-readable,” said Mulindwa.

The IDs will be used as travel documents within the East African Community but Mulindwa however said they will not be mandatory as the cards will be issued on request because recipients will pay for them.

As much as the deadline for member states to get the project rolling elapsed on July 31, only Rwanda has started issuing free IDs to all her students.

Mulindwa said the IDs would rescue students from paying a lot of money to acquire temporary travel documents at border posts.

The move is aimed at fast-tracking the integration of the East African Community, following a recent decision by the heads of state of the East African Community (EAC) to ease movement of goods and persons within the region from using passports as travel documents to national IDs.

The initiative is being piloted by the three member states of the Northern Corridor Integration Projects including Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda, with South Sudan, Burundi and Tanzania expected to come on board shortly.

At the 4th summit meeting of the Northern Corridor integration projects on February 20 held at Speke Resort Munyonyo, the presidents directed that member countries issue standardised students’ identity cards to be used as travel documents by July 1, 2014.

There are over 10 million students in technical, primary and secondary schools, according to the 2009 education statistical abstract by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics. It is believed about 95% of these are below 16 years and are eligible for the new standardised student IDs.

Currently schools charge different amount of fees for students IDs but the average is about sh5,000 per ID.

Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya adopted the use of IDs as travel documents across their borders at an experts meeting in Kigali on December 17, 2013.

Under the arrangement, a traveller has to show the national ID, voters or student IDs at the borders and receive a coupon from the immigration officer of the entry country, which allows him to proceed with her/his travel. An entry stamp of six months is endorsed on the coupon.

In case the coupon is lost while in the country, the traveller is required to present him/herself to the nearest immigration office for issuance of another coupon.

“A traveller who uses a partner state as transit, shall present a national ID, voter’s or student card at the common border of partner states and use a standard travel document to exit a partner state for his or her destination, on condition of presenting a coupon from the entry point,” reads the report by the experts’ meeting held in Rwanda last year.