NIRA ED Kisembo Outcry low Staffing Levels, Every Officer Serves 80,000 People

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 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 officials officials were responding to the queries raised in the December 2023 Auditor General’s report.

Nakaseke Central Legislator Hon Allan Mayanja 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 construction industry.

“We have so many Ugandans specifically those ladies working in salons and gentlemen who are in construction, cement destroyed their fingerprints, these people cannot access national IDs. How are you trying to help out such people because I have so many in Nakaseke, Asked Hon Mayanja

“Why do we have to continue renewing our national IDs? What happens if I don’t renew my national ID? Do I assume a different nationality or I am stateless legally? Why do we continue hearing cases of forged national IDs and National Identification Numbers (NINs) and they are used anyway? I heard a personal experience of somebody who was defrauding people in my name. I reported the matter to Police, asked them to investigate. When they investigated, because he had a telephone number he was flagging around, they said that this person had picked a simcard, using a forged NIN. I was shocked,” noted The Committee Chairperson and Busiro East representative Hon Medard Ssegona.

“The ten fingerprints sometime 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 1 million people on the register who didn’t satisfy fingerprints and for those ones, the biometric used for their identification is their face,” 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 the recurrent expenditures,” explained Kisembo.