10 million Malawians now have National IDs
About 10 million out of the 17.5 million population Malawians are now registered and have been issued with national identification cards (IDs), the National Registration Bureau (NRB) has said.
NRB chief director Harry Kanjewe said this in Blantyre on Friday when the bureau signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Malawi Posts Corporation (MPC) where, among other things, NRB is expected to start operating from 65 post offices across the country to promote efficiency.
NRB embarked on a mass national registration exercise from May to November 2017 during which 9.1 million Malawians were registered.
In January 2018, the bureau embarked on a continuous registration exercise in all 28 districts where, according to Kanjewe, an extra 700 000 people have been registered, bringing the number of registered Malawians to 9.8 million.
Said Kanjewe: “NRB wants to move closer to the people. We want to make birth registration, national registration and application for death certificates accessible to all.
“Now with this arrangement with MPC, we will increase our accessibility as the public will no longer have to travel to the office of the district commissioner to get registered.”
In terms of benefits, he said through post offices, moving of information to NRB central data base will be easier.
“At the same time, MPC has structures readily available instead of us spending on building our own offices,” he added.
In his remarks, MPC postmaster general Henry Shamu said with over 180 post offices nationwide, MPC will be able to provide space to NRB to carry out the registration as well as provide courier services for NRB.
He said: “MPC will benefit much from this arrangement, for example, in terms of revenue generation through courier services and rental charges.
“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.”
On replacement of lost national IDs, the NRB chief said people will be able to replace lost or damaged IDs at a fee of K2 500. However, he was quick to point out that those whose information was misrepresented on the cards can have them corrected at no fee.
The exercise is being carried out with funding from the Malawi Government and several donors that have contributed to a basket fund being run by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
