The Executive Director of National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA), Rosemary Kisembo, has decried the low staffing levels at the Authority, saying this has created a huge workload for staff, where each officer is required to serve 80,000 unregistered Ugandans.
Kisembo made the remarks while appearing before Parliament’s Committee of Commissions, Statutory Authorities and State Enterprises (COSASE), where she said that some Ugandans are forced to travel 80-100Km to access their services in 24 districts and 10 cities.
“NIRA was established in 2015, today, it is 9 years. From the time of establishment, to date, it has registered 27.4 million people with NIN and issued 17.3million cards, although it has printed 20 million cards. From the time of inception, NIRA’s staffing levels have never exceeded 50% meaning that the ratio of unregistered Ugandans to staff in NIRA is 1: 80,000. We are present in 112 districts, meaning, we aren’t present in 24 districts and 10 cities,” explained Kisembo.
“There is a bulk of districts where we aren’t present like Kalaki and Kapelebyong in some of those areas, they are quite a distance apart from our service points and people have to travel between 80-100Kms to access the nearest service. The initial budget for the first year, because we would be buying equipment and chairs would come to close to Shs6.7Bn and subsequently, that budget would go down because of recurrent expenditures,” explained Kisembo.
Allan Mayanja (Nakaseke Central) asked Kisembo to explain the modalities that are being undertaken to help Ugandans whose fingerprints were destroyed in line of work, especially those working in salons and the construction industry.
“We have so many Ugandans, specifically those ladies working in salons and gentlemen who are in construction, cement destroyed their fingerprints, and these people cannot access national IDs. How are you trying to help out such people because I have so many in Nakaseke,” Mayanja said?
“The ten fingerprints sometimes all don’t work, but we try to work with the minimum of six. If all the 10 fingerprints fail, we pick the six strongest fingerprints. At the back of your ID is placed your strongest fingerprints. We have one million people on the register that didn’t satisfy fingerprints and for those ones, the biometric used for their identification is their face,” explained Kisembo.
