Africa-Press – Kenya. Murang’a County residents have been given five days to pick over 50,000 Huduma Namba cards from various collection points in the county.
Speaking to NTV, Murang’a County Commissioner Mohamed Barre noted that only 5,000 cards had been collected within the past week.
“Majority of Murang’a residents have received the text messages but are yet to collect their cards,” he stated.
He confirmed that the second collection phase, slated to commence in early May, would begin once the 51,000 cards were collected.
Further, Barre urged the residents to pick their cards at the nearest Huduma Centres or National Registration Bureau (NRB) offices.
The collection exercise has been progressing at a snail’s pace since the government commenced the process of issuing the cards in February 2021.
In Kilifi, Deputy County Commissioner Josphat Mutisya stated that only 11,000 out of 52,000 cards had been collected.
Nationwide, only ten per cent have collected the cards despite about 37 million Kenyans registering for the service.
The cards were introduced in 2019 and were hailed as a single source of personal identification for Kenyans and persons resident in Kenya.
“The Government has so far distributed Huduma Namba Cards to all the 850 NRB offices located in all the 350 Sub Counties across all the 47 counties,” Government spokesperson Cyrus Oguna stated in a past press briefing.
Oguna also warned Kenyans over fraudsters who were sending text messages soliciting money for people to collect their cards.
“Please note that notification messages will only come to you from Huduma Namba and not any other phone number,” he stated.
