The National Registration Bureau says it has registered 1,556,613 malawians during the National ID outreach registration campaign which was conducted from January to May this year.
Principal Secretary for Homeland Security, Mphatso Sambo revealed this during media briefing on Tuesday stating that the figure surpassed their initial target of K1,500,000 representing a 104 percent of total registration.
“so far we have covered all the districts during this registration and we are happy to announce that we have registered over 1.5 Million people during the exercise”.
“We have also registered 20,000 resident foreigners and for birth registration we have done 3.5 million” said Sambo.
Thereafter, Sambo revealed that the bureau will conduct another registration called mop up registration slated for June to August.
“We are coming up with another registration campaign called Mop Up registration Campaign. In this campaign we will go back to the districts and we’ll go through each and every center to give chance to everyone who didn’t have an opportunity to be registered during the national ID outreach registration and we believe by the end of the campaign, every Malawian will have a chance to be registered” he added
Meanwhile, Sambo disclosed that the bureau encountered a number of challenges during national ID outreach registration campaign such as late payments for logistics, registration equipment challenges, lack of power, poor customer care as well as external interference.
In response to addressing those challenges ahead of the next campaign he mentioned about the introduction of mobile app called document tracker software where every ID will be identified and it will provide solutions to issues concerning ID’s.
On slowness in printing ID’s he said the Bureau has purchased high performance printers from India which will see 15,000 IDs being printed per day compared to the past where only 15 were printed a day.
He further reminded everyone that registration is for free and advised people to report any money claimant for registration.
NRB is a Government Department under the Ministry of Home Affairs and Internal Security and it’s mandated by the National Registration Act of 2010 to implement, coordinate, manage and maintain the National Registration and Identification System (NRIS) in Malawi.
NRB has the following deliverables: Birth and Death Certificates; National Identity Cards for bonafide Malawians; Identity Cards for foreigners; and Certificate of Registration of Marriage.
