The National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA) is holding about 5.4 million newly printed national identity cards that have not yet been collected by citizens.
The backlog was revealed on Monday when NIRA officials appeared before the Committee on Commissions, Statutory Authorities and State Enterprises (COSASE), where they attributed the delays largely to a shortage of permanent staff.
NIRA Executive Director Rosemary Kisembo told the committee that the authority has printed approximately 15.4 million new national identity cards but has issued only about 10 million.
She said the authority’s current workforce is too small to handle its growing responsibilities, particularly after the temporary staff recruited to support the mass registration and renewal exercise left.
“The authority’s existing workforce is insufficient for the scale of its statutory responsibilities,” Kisembo told MPs.
“The workload vis-à-vis the staffing structure does not match.”
NIRA has an approved staffing structure of 571 positions, but only 418 are currently filled. Of these, just 201 employees are directly involved in serving clients.
The staffing gap comes as NIRA’s responsibilities have expanded. Under the Registration of Persons Act, 2015, as amended in 2024, the authority is responsible for maintaining the National Identification Register, registering citizens and lawful non-citizens, and handling birth and death registration.
The 2024 amendments also transferred several civil-registration functions from the Uganda Registration Services Bureau (URSB) to NIRA, including marriage registration.
Kisembo said NIRA would need about nine months to clear the current backlog of uncollected identity cards if its staff concentrated entirely on distributing them.
The authority is therefore seeking approval to increase its permanent workforce from 571 to 998 positions. It is also asking for at least 2,700 temporary workers for 18 months to support its growing workload.
The additional temporary staff would help NIRA complete the renewal of identity cards for about six million people, register an estimated 10.9 million Ugandans who are still outside the national register, process changes in personal details and support birth and death registration.
NIRA’s staffing challenges were partly exposed during the mass registration and renewal exercise that began on 27 May 2025. The authority recruited between about 9,800 and 12,000 temporary workers at different stages, although the number fluctuated because of staff turnover.
For the current financial year, NIRA received about Shs15 billion for temporary staffing and recruited between 3,000 and 3,600 workers for three months, paying each approximately Shs40,000 per day.
However, Kisembo warned that the arrangement would provide only temporary relief.
“At the end of three months, we shall go back to the point of 418 staff, of which 201 are client-facing,” she said.
Some COSASE members, however, questioned whether the delays could be blamed entirely on the shortage of staff.
George Musisi, the committee’s Deputy Chairperson and Kira Municipality MP, said inefficiency, staff motivation and internal service standards could also be contributing to the poor service.
“It is not just about the numbers of the staff… just picking a card, not registration, picking a card is problematic,” Musisi said, recounting his own experience at a NIRA office.
Committee Chairperson Muwada Nkunyingi also raised complaints from citizens whose newly issued identity cards had not been activated or linked to other government systems.
Bungokho County South MP Geofrey Wokuri highlighted the impact of the delays on young people applying for driving permits. He said some applicants risk losing money paid for driving training while waiting for their identification details to become operational.
NIRA told the committee that the driving-permit system is still being integrated with the new identification platform but that an interim solution is in place.
The authority is also dealing with the challenge of transferring marriage records from URSB.
NIRA inherited about 1.2 million physical marriage records stored in approximately 302 archival boxes that had previously been kept off-site under a URSB contract.
Officials said NIRA has since procured and migrated a system that mirrors the one previously used by URSB.
“The system is the same. It was just moved from… URSB because now URSB doesn’t have a marriage function,” the officials told the committee.
NIRA is now responsible for registering civil, church, customary, Hindu and Muslim marriages.
The backlog of identity cards is part of a wider registration challenge. NIRA estimates that about 10.9 million Ugandans are still not registered in the national identification system, while approximately six million people already on the register have yet to renew their identity cards.
