Interior Principal Secretary Karanja Kibicho has dismissed claims that the government will use the Huduma card to rig the August 9 general elections.
Appearing before the National Assembly Committee on Administration and National Security yesterday, he noted that the Huduma Number Bill 2021 does not plan to abolish the Immigration, civil and National Registration bureaus as previously claimed.
“Rather, the Bill intends to harmonize the activities of these depts that essentially rely on the same information,” Kibicho stated.
He said the Huduma Namba will help stop non-citizens from infiltrating the national registration system and accessing services that are strictly for Kenyans.
“Huduma is simply positive identification of Kenyans…and Kenyans only”, he added.
The Interior PS stated that the Huduma Bill does not seek to collect new data, but rather to consolidate information already collected by various government departments and agencies.
He also stated that the bill will save various state departments such as the IEBC, NHIF, NTSA, and Immigration from the high cost of biometric registration that is currently getting noticed.
Kibicho indicated that collecting new Huduma data is critical to cleaning up existing government database registration, which he claims has been infiltrated by unethical individuals and criminals.
However, MPs allied to Deputy President William Ruto have claimed that the Huduma Namba was being pushed to rig the 2022 General Election.
The Immigration Department and the civil society have also opposed creation of the number, which they claim is open to manipulation.
The Immigration Department termed the bill unconstitutional, saying the scope of immigration officers goes beyond the national population register and thus it is a miscalculation to replace an immigration officer with an NIIMS officer.
“The Bill makes an assumption that immigration officers’ functions only relate to issuance of passports,” the department says in a memorandum.
Kibicho maintained the Bill seeks to establish the National Integration Identity Management System (NIIMS), a central database where government agencies and other entities can access for provision of services.