National government officials in Migori have rolled out a massive campaign to make the Huduma Namba registration exercise a success in the region.
Several campaign strategies are lined up across the vast county, to whip up the public for the national exercise scheduled to officially kick off Tuesday April 2, 2019
“We are ready to hit the ground with effect from Tuesday to register as many people as possible within the next 45 days,” said Dennis Mutiso, the Suna East Deputy County Commissioner during the County Service Delivery Committee sitting at the Migori IFAD hall on Friday.
Mutiso said some of the strategies through which the Huduma Namba messages will reach the masses will include, chiefs’ barazas, public rallies, churches, Nyumba Kumi meetings, Radio talk shows/interviews and through the print media and Television.
He said training of the registration clerks had started with 1033 enumerators recruited to handle the exercise through the biometric system.
“All the 211 assistant chiefs within this region have also been taken in as enumerators and distribution of the clerks would be based on the strength of population in a given sub-location,” he said.
The exercise will be carried out using three approaches including placing 3 officers at the local Huduma Centre, having registration centres in markets, trading centres and in strategic places in towns besides running mobile registration centres to capture people who cannot come out of their houses.
The Huduma Namba, he added, will not invalidate other documents held by Kenyans but is an initiative to collate all personal data into one place for easy access.
Mutiso urged the local people and especially leaders to stop peddling unfounded rumours about the Huduma Namba, asking them to instead be good ambassadors for the exercise to succeed.
The exercise has received criticisms from the public through sustained mainstream and social media bashing over allegations that it is a move to rig elections, collect people’s DNA, sack people from government offices and enlist Kenyans for heavy taxes.
Kenyans have questioned the rationale of spending billions of shillings on generating the Huduma Namba when similar exercise like the national census scheduled for August this year, would lead to the same results.
However, the state has moved to clarifying that census is an event targeting mainly numbers, while the Huduma Namba is a process that is a continuous exercise capturing new entrants as well as, adding new information on individual Kenyans and foreigners living within the borders of the country.
By George Agimba
