BY OLUM DOUGLAS
In the midst of the boiling anger among Ugandans both within and without over political mishaps, torture and president Museveni’s social media excitement, we wake up today to the news that Cabinet, chaired by the President, came up with a resolution to scrap a number of government agencies and merge others, among them the National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA) and Uganda National Roads Authority (UNRA).
Anyone who cares to know should by now be aware that most of those agencies, if not all, were created simply to reward party loyalists and their families. Many of them were duplicating roles to be played by departments under government ministries.
For instance, UNRA, Uganda Road Fund, and the Transport Licensing Board, all taken from the Ministry of Works and Transport, rendering the mother ministry almost powerless.
Most of those agencies are simply spending agencies and not income generating, yet some could not function. Take NIRA for instance. Since its creation, how many National Identity Cards (IDs) have they produced? How many do they produce in a day?
I was at Kololo Airstrip where the authority is headquartered in May. The first day I went there, I reached at 3:48 PM. They told me that I was already too late to apply for my national ID renewal. They asked me to go back the next day.
I could not find the time, so I went about a week later. It was about 2:30 PM. WhenIi reached the airstrip, they only gave me the application forms and asked me to return on Monday. It was a Friday.
I filled the forms and returned to submit them in on Monday. I reached at 8 am I was that I was already too late. I had to return the next morning. They told me to be there by 5 am lest I fail to apply again.
Because I had a busy schedule for that day and the next couple of days, I did not return but made it to Kololo on Friday of that week. By 5:05 am, I was already in Kololo. About twenty other people were at the scene, chasing the same thing.
I joined the sitting cue. One hour went by and there was no one to attend to us. Two hours clocked and still, there was no one.
A man appeared minutes after 8:30 am and started addressing us. He directed that those who had only one payment receipt should go and make a second payment in the bank.
A fee of Ushs1,000 had been freshly introduced and it was to be paid in the bank alongside another bank charge of between shillings 2,000 to 2,500 depending on the bank you went to.
When we asked him questions, he got angry at us and started bubbling a lot of nonsense. I have never gone back to apply for the reprint of my national ID.
NIRA staff behave as though the numbers they issued on the previous IDs were not stored because, honestly, if you have the number on the system and you can verify that the applicant is the very one, why charge them for another ID number? Why does the immigration office not charge us for another passport number?
I interacted with several people, some of whom had applied for the national IDs about a year ago but had yet to get them. If the Immigration Office can process passports in just two weeks, yet hundreds of people apply for both new and renewal of passports every working day, why couldn’t NIRA make a mere National ID in a week?
The disbanding of NIRA is, therefore, too long overdue. It should have been ten months back or never even formed at all. I am, therefore, in a celebratory mood over the disbandment.
The writer is a journalist and social rights activist.