What is all the fuss about the new Huduma Namba system?
Some people object that the biometric kits for taking IDs come from Safran whose machines were used in the 2017 election. They insinuate that there might now be rigged identities.
Others claim that government is issuing threats when it says citizens will not get services without a Huduma Namba. But even today you need an ID for services.
There is a false rumour that DNA might be collected. But so what if it was? We already give our fingerprints for IDs and biometric data for voting.
Others fear wealth declaration. But if you are paying your taxes, what’s the problem? Anyway government can already look at all your bank accounts.
Huduma Namba is an expensive project costing Sh6 billion. It will consolidate all existing numbers into a ‘single source of truth’ so you will no longer have different numbers for tax, drivers licence, passport, etc. In the long run, this will be more convenient for citizens and more economical for government.
As for privacy, government already has all this data in different places. We should campaign for data protection rather than trying to block Huduma Namba.
Our fears are overblown, so when the Huduma Namba registration starts in the near future, let’s all cooperate and support it.
Read the Registration of Persons Act. It was amended to include DNA as part of biometric data. This is an illegal and unconstitutional violation of privacy.
Why is a cash strapped government engaging in an expensive and unnecessary exercise?
This is nonsense. Ecitizen already has almost all this information. NHIF has even more. The CID has even more as does KRA. Why does the Government need to force 52+ million people to queue up to collect information that it already has?
A government that cannot account for the billions it collects in taxes cannot be trusted with the private data of the citizens it has.
The biometric election process was supposed to be more efficient but what was witnessed was blatant rigging, inefficiency in information storage and a reversion to the old manual electoral register.
This project stinks to high heaven and it’s little more than another harebrained Jubilee scheme that will leave Kenyans suffering for years to come.