Kenya aims to issue 3 million digital national IDs and 1 million biometric passports, this year in 2024. Principal Secretary for Immigration and Citizen Services – Julius Bitok, revealed about this, last week, in the month of April.
Reportedly, while planning the meeting regarding the issue at the city of Mombasa, Bitok said that action has been taken by the government to ensure easy access towards identity credentials.
The increase in the issuance of the documents will mean improved revenue, which will be collected from the provision of the services through the e-Citizen digital government, confirmed Julius Bitok.
Principal Secretary Bitok mentioned that the target will concern the civil status registration documents that sees the digitized confirmation of at least 46 million birth and death records.
As a result of their concern about the passports, Julius Bitok said that the production process will be accelerated because the two new machines will be available and installed soon. He also expressed that the waiting time will be decreased drastically in less than 14 days.
Moreover, the officials declared that the new passports’ target is to double the 533,000 passports, which were issued in the previous year with the higher output, which is pegged on the combined printing capacity of 600 passports per hour by the new machines.
As per the sources, it was part of a plan of the government to open new passport offices in the town of Bungoma, Garissa, and Nyeri to serve more people.
Julius Bitok also informed that the passport printers will be put to use this week, adding further steps, taken to produce enough booklets, while other operational expenses have also been taken care of.
Recently, Kenya suffered through a huge backlog of national ID and biometric passport production with the issue which was blamed on a court order that blocked the issuance of the new Maisha Namba digital ID.
Taking this all into consideration, the government now wants to double down on its efforts to issue the necessary documents that Kenyans need in order to carry out the day-to-day transactions of their lives.
Notably, around 733,000 Maisha IDs had been already issued in Kenya. Bitok also announced that the digital government intends to increase the number of services to 20,000 from the current 16,000.
However, the process to accelerate the registration of around 200,000 refugees is also a part of the government’s actions for execution.