Nice urges people to keep IDs safely
National Initiative for Civic Education (Nice) Trust in the Northern Region has cautioned people against giving their national identity cards away, describing the cards as personal property.
The warning comes amid reports that some people in Lilongwe have had their IDs snatched by some unscrupulous agriculture extension workers, purportedly for purposes of registering them for Farm Input Subsidy Programme (Fisp).
While dismissing fears of any such card-snatching incidences in northern Malawi, the region’s civic education officer Vincent Kalawa on Wednesday cautioned people to safeguard the cards.
“We have not received any reports of such incidences here in the Northern Region. But it is very unfortunate and this is what we as Nice have been telling the people. People should keep safely their IDs, they should not surrender them to anybody. That is a personal property, it is not for someone to take for Fisp and anything like that,” he cautioned.
MEC district elections clerk Demeria Rocha confirmed that the distribution of the national IDs resumed last week.
The national IDs are the only IDs that will be accepted by MEC as identification of Malawians when registering as voters in the biometric registration of voters ahead of the 2019 Tripartite Elections. n