National Registration Bureau (NRB) has described the distribution of national identity cards (IDs) as impressive, saying 98 percent of the IDs have been distributed.
Speaking during a district registration task force team meeting in Blantyre on Friday, Blantyre district assistant registrar George Chitsonga said unlike in urban areas, 100 percent of the IDs in rural areas have been distributed.
“Out of 194 centres, only four in Blantyre Urban, namely Blantyre Tax Office, Mbayani Primary School, Ndirande Makata and Ndirande Community Hall, have not distributed all the cards. They still have many IDs that need to be distributed.
“Due to that, we asked the National Registration Bureau head office to extend the distribution period for the four centres. They have accepted and the exercise will continue for another one week or so,” he said.
Chitsonga described the distribution exercise a success, adding that a few challenges were registered during implementation, citing the mixing up cartons containing the IDs.
“There were few challenges but we addressed them all,” he said.
Blantyre District was in the third phase of the national mass registration exercise and about 739 000 people registered.
According to NRB, 9.1 million Malawians registered during the national IDs mass registration from May to October 2017.
Speaking earlier during the official announcement of mass registration statistics, President Peter Mutharika said the figure represent 100 percent the targeted population.
He said the national ID is a game changer that will deal with a number of anomalies in public service delivery. na
