Okay, yeah I know this is not really a question but I feel it had to be said.
Let’s start with why the government claims Kenyan citizens ‘need’ to have a Huduma Namba (number):
It will be a national catalogue of all citizens’ data
It will reduce crime by improving traceability of persons
It will smoothen service delivery by synthesising all registration facilities i.e. NHIF, NSSF, voter registration, etc.
It will curtail fraudsters who use identities of deceased persons
Now, let us turn to why the project is bogus: –
A national ID card, which comes with unique serial and ID numbers, can serve purposes (1) to (4) above which begs the questions:
– Why isn’t the government simply using national ID registration to harmonise the data?
– There was a time some money was allocated to make national ID cards ‘smart’ (with data chips) so what happened?
Just as it was with the botched anglo-leasing project, one can argue that this may simply be another avenue to steal public funds while pretending ‘to work’
Why can’t a national ID card (its data rather) be used to do (4) above? If they argue that the data is wanting then that would be a confession of incompetence on part of the government which again begs the question why we would then trust them with this new Huduma Namba project
I can go on and on but this gives a gist of the flakiness of the Huduma Namba project.