The National Registration Identification Authority (NIRA) has after a long-time of silence come out to react to public discontent over the delayed IDs for school children.
Gilbert Kadilo, Manager Public Relations and Corporate Affairs at NIRA issued a detailed statement on Friday to defend what many Ugandan referred to as shoddy and incompetent, a registration process that began in 2017, and 3 days down the road not even a single ID has been produced yet billions of taxpayer’s money were spent on the project.
DETAILS
Following a number of inquiries and comments on various platforms regarding the status of National Identification Numbers (NINs) and National ID cards for children registered during the 2017 registration of learners project, NIRA wishes to reiterate its earlier communication on this matter as follows.
Between May to December 2017 the Government of Uganda carried out the Registration of Learners Project to register learners in both Government and private Schools, between the ages of 5-16 years.
The project that was led by NIRA working with the Ministry of Education and Sports (MoES) and other government agencies projected to register 10 million learners across the country.
It was then stated, that only learners aged 16 years and above, would be issued with National IDs, while those aged 15 years and below would be assigned National Identification Numbers (NINs).
It was also stated that learners who would have missed registration during the project period would still have an opportunity to do so through our routine registration programmes conducted at the various NIRA District offices.
To date, of the 9.7 million Learners registered in the exercise, 7,102,453 million NINs have been processed while 371,087 National IDs have been printed for those who were 16 years and above at the time of registration.
To ensure ease of access to the learners NINs and for issuance of the National IDs, NIRA disaggregated the NIN lists by district and by school. The NINs and IDs were dispatched to the various NIRA district and division offices.
In addition, in May 2019, lists of successfully registered Learners and their NINs were sent to the District Education Officers across the country from whom headteachers were instructed to collect the lists for their respective schools.
Those headteachers that have never collected their school lists are encouraged to do so, from either the office of the DEO or the NIRA district/division offices in Kampala.
At the same time, names of those learners who lacked complete documentation were likewise sent to their respective schools for them to provide the required information and have their registrations completed.
Parents, guardians can therefore obtain their children’s NINs through the following mechanisms:
1. From the respective District NIRA offices under which the school where the child registered from falls.
2. From the schools where they registered from
3. Check for their children’s NINs through the mobile phone Application *216#
4. Call the NIRA Call Centre on 0800211700 (toll free) for further guidance Note however, that National Card issuance for learners who were aged 16 year and above at the time are issued at the various NIRA district and division offices.
The individuals are therefore expected to appear in person to pick their cards. The public is also reminded that there is continuous registration of persons at all NIRA district offices for both adults and children.
Children who were registered at school but had not made 16 years at the time but have since made 16 years are encouraged to go to any NIRA office and initiate the process of acquisition of a National ID.
