The renewal of National Identity Cards had flopped over funding gaps, Eagle Online has learnt. The revelation was made by Rosemary Kisembo, the Executive Director of National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA).
The renewals of IDs were scheduled to start in August 2023 up to August 2025, targeting 17.2 million citizens who have never been registered and 20 million Ugandans who wish to renew their National IDs.
According to Kisembo they are short of Shs666.85 billion which is needed to kick start the exercise. “NIRA cannot commence the mass enrollment of 17.2 million people due to funding gaps,” she said earlier today.
The first batch of 15.8 million identity cards that were printed and issued in the 2014/2015 will expire between August 2024 and June 2025, thus justifying the need for renewal in accordance with Regulation 19(1) of the Registration of Persons Regulations SI 67 /2015.
The renewal was scheduled to happen at each parish in a rotational manner with NIRA deploying 10 registration kits per parish per day. The exercise was expected to happen over a 12-month period beginning August 2023. After that period, these services would be operationalized and delivered at district level.
At parish level, 800 persons wishing to renew their IDs are expected to be served per day while 600 persons who are registering for the first time will be served.