By: Draxon Maloya.
Lilongwe. (News of The South) – The highly publicised Malawi national citizenry registration exercise which was carried out last year in all the districts of the country is reported to have left out 7.5 million people without a national identification documents (ID).
Citizen registry under way in Malawi
The National Registration Bureau (NRB) Chief Director Harry Njewe confirmed the disappointing news in Blantyre on Friday when the bureau was signing a memorandum of understanding with Malawi Post Corporation (MPC) where among others the NRB will be operating from 65 post offices across the country.
“We have managed to register slightly above nine million people of the 17.5 million country’s population so it is quite very significant to sign this memorandum of understanding with Malawi Post Corporation which shall enable us to operate from their premises,
“NRB would like to move close to the people, we want to make sure that birth registration, national registration and application for health certificates are accessible to all,” Njewe said.
With this development the NRB has increased accessibility as the public will no longer have to travel to the office of the district commissioner to get registered while at the same time the bureau shall not be spending on building its own offices.
The MPC’s Post Master General Henry Shamu said with over 180 post offices across the country his corporation will be able to provide space to NRB to carry out the registration as well as provide courier services for the registration body.
“NRB is also expected to facelift the post offices and bring solar power to areas where there is no electricity as well as Internet services accessible to both institutions,” Shamu said.
On replacement of lost national IDs the NRB boss said people will be able to replace lost or damaged IDs at a fee of Mk2,500.00 ($3.38) . However he was quick to point out that those whose information was misrepresented on the cards can have them corrected at no fee.
In January 2018, the bureau embarked on a massive registration exercise during which government was expecting to register every citizen in all the 28 districts of the country.
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