Power outages slow down ID registration
By Mphatso Sam, Mec Stringer:
The National Registration Bureau (NRB) has said it is only using two of its 10 printers to produce National Identity cards (IDs) for the whole country because of electricity connectivity hitches at their office in Lilongwe.
NRB Spokesperson Norman Fulatira told Malawi News Agency (Mana) in Blantyre on Friday that it is presently not possible to run all the printers considering the electricity problem at their office.
“For all the printers to run, we require three phase connection which is not currently available. With the current connection, we are using only two printers,” he revealed.
Fulatira was responding to queries that a lot of people were being turned back from most collecting centres in the country despite registering for the national identification for close to three months.
He said that NRB has already engaged Electricity Supply Corporation of Malawi (Escom) for a three phase connection.
“We are waiting for our colleagues to help us change wiring of the building so that we print at full scale. There is nothing at the moment apart from printing using two printers. That aside, very shortly we will be moving the printers to a containerised facility where the printing will be taking place,” he said.
Fulatira asked all Malawians who are yet to get their National IDs to go to the district where they registered and cross check with the district officer, as there could be reasons for the identification cards being withheld.
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