The government has purchased a new machine to print national identity cards, hoping to avoid a crisis caused by delays in issuing important documents.
Principal Secretary for Immigration and Citizen Services Julius Pittock said in an update on Monday that since the introduction of the digital ID in November last year, the National Registration Bureau (NRB) has issued 972,630 Maisha cards of which 531,329 consisted of new applications while 441,301 were duplicates.
“The National Reserve Council appreciates the importance of the National Identity Card as a constitutional right and a basic identity document and will strive to ensure that eligible Kenyans obtain it as soon as possible,” Petuk said.
“To meet the increasing demand for services, the Civil Status Authority acquired a modern printer and enhanced its printing capacity to 30,000 national ID cards per day against an average demand of 10,000.”
Last November, the specialized security printing machines that had produced second-generation ID cards for nearly a decade and a half were shut down, but a court order to stop printing third-generation ID cards was issued shortly afterwards, halting a process that had routinely given legal identity to Kenyans since 1915.
By February this year, applications for new ID cards had piled up to more than 600,000 in just two and a half months, and were rising by about 10,000 a day. An additional 5,000 Kenyans were applying to replace lost or mutilated ID cards every day.
The crisis, which has since escalated to full-blown levels and sparked outrage among Kenyans online, means that the lives of dozens of the country’s young people who came of age after mid-November last year have been brought to a standstill.
Among the far-reaching impacts is the inability of young people to open bank accounts, register new mobile phone SIM cards, or even access Higher Education Loan Board (Helb) funding for those attending universities and other higher learning institutions.