ID project: Continuous registration ends Jan 11

By Steven Candia

KAMPALA - The national identity card project, come January 11 this coming year, will close the ongoing continuous registration exercise at sub-county level and shift to the next phase – data processing.

Updating the media on the progress of the project, internal affairs minister Gen. Aronda Nyakairima said the decision to close the continuous registration exercise and transit into the crucial phase of data processing was due to two factors.

One, because of the high level of registration so far registered, and two, the need not to “make the project a burden for the government budget”.

“We want to close this exercise on January 11 and move to the hub or centre of gravity,” said the visibly jovial minister.

“It is no longer mass or continuous enrolment but data processing, printing and issuing.”

Nyakairima was speaking from the project headquarters at the Kololo Independence Grounds in the capital Kampala.

Additionally he noted that the transition had been necessitated so as to save government equipment from wear and tear, given the paltry number of people not registered.

Costly to continue

Haji Abdul Nsubuga, the project manager of the National Information Security Strategy, presented details of the project.

He said enrollment for the national identity card countrywide as of December 12 stood at 15,775,522, translating into 87.6% registration level.

Going by the 2014 census, he noted, only a paltry 183, 074 people (1.1 percent) remained unregistered and urged them to use the duration before January 11 to register.

Both Nyakairima and Nsubuga, using statistics, explained that it had become costly to continue with the continuous registration exercise given the low turn-up, despite a lot of equipment being deployed.

“Data processing and translating that it into a finished card is quite an exercise, and doing that for 15 million people is a lot of work. So we would now focus on the majority rather than the few,” Nyakairima noted.

Statistics available indicated that districts like Katakwi had registered in the last four months a total of 1200 people, with a daily average of 10 from eight centres.

“From the above [stats], it is clear that we have to move to the next phase.”

Among those present at the press conference was Col Steven Kwiringira, the head of the National ID project.

Launched in April 2014 with a target of registering 18 million Ugandans, the project moved from mass enrollment to continuous registration in August – an exercise due to end next month.

Nsubuga said as per their road map, identity card issuance which had started in Kampala but had only covered 28% of the parishes, should be able to reach 98% by December 29.

“We should be in all the parishes in Kampala by that date.”