Gov’t to issue digital birth and death certificates from March

Speaking in Ngong, Kajiado County during the opening of Civil Registration Services on Tuesday, Immigration and Citizen Services Principal Secretary Prof. Julius Bitok said the new registration format dubbed Unique Personal Identifier (UPI) will be used to register newborns.

This, he explained, would serve as their identity for the rest of their lives.

“On the 1st of March, all registrations of births and death will be online. They will be accessed through e-citizen services and people will be given what we call Unique Personal Identifier (UPI),” Prof Bitok said 

PS Bitok said the UPI, unlike the previously launched Huduma Namba, would only apply to newborns to be used for admission to both primary and secondary schools and later in their lives.

“We are saying we don’t have to give someone many numbers. You’ll be given a number when you’re born and you’ll use that number in primary school as your registration number, high school, in college, use it as an ID and it becomes your number for whatever transaction,” Bitok stated.

According to the PS, the Government seeks to use the UPI programme in a bid to raise the percentage of both registered births and deaths across the country.

Currently, births and deaths stand at 86 per cent and 55 per cent respectively. The PS says registration has been a challenge, especially among nomadic and pastoral communities.

The PS noted that the new CSR office in Ngong will ease access to the aforementioned registrations and certification in the country which have a record on births and deaths stands at 85 per cent and 31 per cent respectively.

Area MP Onesmus Ngogoyo and Environment PS Ephantus Kimotho who were also present urged residents to take advantage of the new office and the planned UPI to register new births and deaths. 

The move by the State follows a subsequent announcement by President William Ruto that his administration was seeking to roll out a similar programme like the Huduma Namba before the end of the year.

“I have also asked the Ministry of ICT to work on a digital identity so that the big Huduma thing that never was we can finally have, as Kenya, a digital identity,” he said during the observation of International Data Privacy Day at KICC.