The government has announced that candidates sitting for this year’s Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KSCE) will be issued with the new Maisha Card before the end of the examination.
According to Immigration and Citizen Services PS Julius Bitok, the issuance of ID cards to those who will have attained 18 years and above among the 965,000 candidates is intended to ease access to university education and other tertiary institutions.
When he appeared before the National Assembly’s Education, Research, and Technology committee on Tuesday, he said the joint exercise by the ministries of Interior and Education would ensure students who join universities and colleges are not disadvantaged by missing identification documents.
“We have mobilized our registration officers across the country to issue Maisha Cards to eligible candidates to enable those who qualify to join local or international universities, apply for Higher Education Loans Board, scholarships and other post-high school pursuits.”
Further, he revealed that a paperless Maisha Card registration process is being piloted in Huduma Centres and National Registration Bureau offices in county headquarters to ensure Maisha cards are issued within 10 days.
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“We’ve gone paperless. You apply for your ID on the eCitizen portal, then visit any Huduma centre or NRB county office for your biometrics, which will be relayed in real-time to the NRB headquarters in Nairobi.”
The committee sought to know what was being done to redress delays in issuing ID cards that candidates joining universities and other tertiary institutions experienced earlier this year.
However, the PS attributed the delays to several court injunctions that stopped the government from issuing Maisha Cards, leading to a backlog of 600,000 unprinted cards.
