Big progress:NRB registers a total of 12,086,424 ID cards

National Registration Bureau, (NRB) says it is making tremendous progress in issuance of national identification cards as it reaches 96 percent to only those that are eligible to be registered.

NRB Principal Secretary , says the bureau has currently registered accumulatively ,
12,086,424 and printed 11,734,777.

Mphatso Sambo said, those that are eligible are the one’s that have reached the age of 16.

He said this is part of the bureau’s mandate to ensure that citizens are registered and provided with security documents. But Sambo was quick to react that they are struggling to finish the remaining percentage as in 2021 over 3 million cards expired and they have been struggling to ensure that the expired cards are managed.

Speaking at a stakeholders engagement meeting in Dowa on the implementation of the bureau’s mandate, Sambo said the bureau remain optimistic that they will reach the target highlighting that with directive from President Lazarus Chakwera through his State of National Address, (SONA) that the bureau should remove any fee attached to the registration of national identification cards, the citizenry are now responding positively to the exercise.

“The President suspended the requirements for an ID card to expire until 2026, that gives us a breather that all cards can still be in use for several purposes including, passport registration services, driving licenses, as well as AIP and other social cash transfer services including electroal registration for voting,” he highlighted.

He further said that now they are printing more cards than ever before as they are printing over 200,000 cards per month, as he describes this as a great success.

During the meeting some of the challenges that have emanated are; long distance that people travel to access district registration offices, a lot of uncollected identity cards at the registration offices, lack of card destruction policy, performance of computers which the bureau is using since they are old, long procurement processes as well as intermittent network.

But there were also some recommendations that were made that can address those challenges which include; construction and renovation of some offices for district registration officers, speeding up the development of identity cards destruction policy, supporting district registration officers with resources for identity cards distribution.