NIDA orders modern gear to ease citizen verification

National Identification Authority has placed a procurement order for equipment that is hoped to speed up verification of millions of Tanzanian waiting for their National identity cards.

The revealation was made yesterday by NIDA Director General Dickson Maimu in an exclusive interview with The Guardian.

He revealed that NIDA has so far issued 220,000 IDs to public servants and that the exercise will be completed in the next three weeks.

“We are going to complete issuing IDs to civil servants in the coming three weeks and we are going to embark on the process of verifying ordinary citizen soon after getting the equipment which we have already ordered,” he said.

He also said that the equipment will be imported by IRIS Behard, a Malaysian Company that won the tender to supply the equipment.

The ordered machines will help speed up the verification exercise and reduce congestions as well as chaos at the registration centers where residents will biometric data.

Maimu explained that the issuance of IDs is expected to be but a simple process but it is the verification process that is complicated and time consuming since it involves other institutions such as Registration Insolvency and Trusteeship Agency (RITA), ward executive offices, Immigration department and National Electoral Commission (NEC).

The process has five stages, filling the forms, feeding data into the system, verification, finger print and finally the issuing of IDs.

On February this year, President Jakaya Kikwete inaugurated the National IDs project and the first 46 National identity cards went to top government leaders and high profile personalities, marking a milestone in the registration and identification of Tanzanians which had stalled for over 30 years.

Among the current government leaders who received their IDs were President Jakaya Kikwete, Inspector General of Police Said Mwema, Isles First Vice President Seif Shariff Hamad, Home Affairs minister Dr Emmanuel Nchimbi, Dar es Salaam Regional Commissioner Meck Saddick, President’s wife Salma Kikwete and the Dar es Salaam City mayor, Didas Masaburi.

Also, former government leaders, former presidents Ali Hassan Mwinyi and Benjamin Mkapa, and ex-president of Zanzibar Amani Abeid Karume.

Others were former Prime ministers Salim Ahmed Salim, Joseph Warioba and long time Chama Cha Mapinduzi cadre and Minister Kingunge Ngombale Mwiru.

The agency has secured a plot to construct a data collection centre and also to serve as a disaster recovery site and further plans to build district offices.

He assured Tanzanians that information collected will remain secret and appealed to the public to fully participate and provide enough cooperation to agency officials when the exercise starts in other areas.

The registration of citizens started as a pilot project last year with civil servants in Zanzibar and Tanzania Mainland as well as for Kilombero and Dar es Salaam residents being the first to participate.

SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN