13 million Ugandans yet to receive IDs, govt

Only 3.1 million Ugandans have been issued with national identity cards six months after the issuance exercise commenced in December last year, the internal affairs ministry has said. Internal affairs state minister James Baba told the press in Kampala on Friday that the rest of the 16.4 million people who registered for the IDs would have received them by the end of September.
The 3.1 million people (about 19 per cent of the total 16.4 million) who have been covered hail from 38 of the 112 districts of Uganda. At the current rate, only 17,222 people are issued with IDs daily and at the same rate, the ministry would require 772 days – more than two years. However, the ministry will struggle to distribute the IDs to the remaining 13.3 million people in four months, up to the end of September, the set deadline.
KAMPALA ULTIMATUM
Baba also said that the ministry had decided to end card issuance exercise in Kampala on June 15 while the residents of Wakiso and Mpigi would have up to June 30 to pick their IDs.
Some 457,882 people who registered for national identity cards will struggle to pick them, following government’s insistence that the exercise be completed within only 10 days, including weekends.
Only 767,040 (about 63 per cent) of the 1,224,922 people who registered for the IDs in Kampala had received them within six months. That translates into 4,261 IDs issued per day.
At the current rate, the 10-day ultimatum would only cover 42,610 people, barely 10 per cent of the remaining 457,882. If all the remaining people are to be issued at the same rate with IDs, Kampala alone may require 107 more days, not 10.
The situation is not any different in the districts of Wakiso and Mpigi. In the former district, only 395,000 (about 46 per cent) people have been issued with IDs of the 857,257 residents supposed to receive the cards since February, a space of four months. In the same period, only 70, 000 (about 57 per cent) of the 122,107 residents of Mpigi have picked their IDs.