Frustration mars IDs exercise in Blantyre

People registering in the ongoing national identity cards project currently being rolled out by the National registration Bureau (NRB) in Blantyre have expressed concerns over some irregularities at some of the designated centres.

Checks at Ngumbe and Nyambadwe primary schools and Blantyre Youth Centre yesterday afternoon found that most of the people in the registration queues were those who had failed to do so the previous day after forms had run out.

One of the people waiting to register at Ngumbe, Davies Nasiyaya, said even though the people are turning up in their large numbers, registration officers start the exercise late.

He said: “This is a very important exercise as it will benefit us, the people. I came here at 7am, but because there were a lot of people, I failed to register as it is taking time for the centres to start the exercise, which is boring. To make matters worse, they are also closing the centres earlier than the scheduled time.”

His sentiments were corroborated by FainessNsambo who said the issue of forms running out has affected them as they have to visit the centres days on end.

But one of the supervisors, Amon Chavula, attributed the problem of commencing the exercise past the opening time of 7am and closing at 5pm to the equipments’ reliance on solar power.

“If you look at this centre, there are no lights. So, the equipment we are using depends on solar energy. This means that every morning we have to wait for the equipment to be powered up by the sun, and we close earlier than the usual time because by somewhere around 4pm, our equipment cannot function properly,” he said.

Chavula said that despite facing such challenges, they are managing to register about 390 people in a day as the turn up has been overwhelming since the exercise started last Friday.