The government has purchased a new national Identity Card (ID) printing machine, hoping to avert a crisis over delayed issuance of the critical documents.
The Principal Secretary for Immigration and Citizen Services Julius Bitok said in a Monday update that since the digital ID was introduced in November last year, the National Registration Bureau (NRB) had issued 972,630 Maisha cards out of which 531,329 comprised new applications while 441,301 were duplicates.
“The NRB appreciates the importance of the national ID card as a constitutional right and an essential identification document and will strive to ensure eligible Kenyans obtain it as soon as possible,” said Bitok.
“To meet the rising demand for services, NRB has acquired a modern printer and enhanced the printing capacity to 30,000 national ID cards per day against an average demand of 10,000 applications.”
Last November, specialised security printer machines that produced the second-generation ID cards for nearly one-and-a-half-decade were switched off but a court order stopping the printing of third-generation IDs was issued shortly thereafter, halting a process that has routinely assigned legal identity to Kenyans since 1915.
As of February this year, applications for new ID cards had piled up to more than 600,000 within just a two-and-a-half-month period, with the number at the time going up by 10,000 every day. An additional 5,000 Kenyans were applying for replacement of lost or defaced IDs daily.
The crisis that has since escalated to full-blown levels sparking scorching rage among Kenyans online, means that scores of the country’s youth attaining the adult age after mid-November last year have had their lives stopping at a standstill.
Among the far-reaching impacts have been the inability of young people to open bank accounts, register new mobile phone SIM cards, or even access the Higher Education Loans Board (Helb) funding for those joining universities and other tertiary-level learning institutions.
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