NIRA stuck with 5.4 million uncollected national IDs

The National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA) has told MPs that it is holding more than 5.4 million newly printed national identity cards that citizens have yet to collect.

The backlog could affect access to services that require national identification, including banking, mobile money, driving permits and civil registration, as the national ID becomes increasingly central to formal identification in Uganda.

NIRA executive director Rosemary Kisembo attributed the backlog largely to inadequate permanent staffing following the expiry of a temporary workforce recruited to support the mass enrolment and renewal exercise.

Kisembo was appearing before the Committee on Commissions, Statutory Authorities and State Enterprises (Cosase).

NIRA has an approved staff establishment of 571 positions, but only 418 are filled, with just 201 staff directly serving clients. Kisembo said the authority has printed about 15.4 million new identity cards but has issued only about 10 million, leaving approximately 5.4 million cards in its custody.

The mass enrolment and renewal exercise, launched on May 27, 2025, was supported by between 9,800 and 12,000 temporary workers at different stages, although the numbers fluctuated because of staff attrition.

Even with additional temporary staff, NIRA estimates it would take about nine months to clear the backlog if personnel focused exclusively on card distribution.

The authority is seeking to increase its permanent establishment from 571 to 998 positions, alongside at least 2,700 temporary workers for 18 months.

The additional workforce would help complete renewals for about six million people, register an estimated 10.9 million Ugandans who are not yet on the national register, process changes in personal particulars and support birth and death registration.

For the current financial year, NIRA received about Shs15 billion for temporary staffing and recruited between 3,000 and 3,600 workers for three months at about Shs40,000 per day.

Kisembo acknowledged that the arrangement offers only temporary relief.

“At the end of three months, we shall go back to the point of 418 staff, of which 201 are client-facing,” she told the committee.

However, MPs questioned whether staffing alone explains the delays. George Musisi, Cosase deputy chairperson and Kira Municipality MP, said inefficiency and internal service standards could also be contributing to the problem.

“It is not just about the numbers of the staff… just picking a card, not registration, picking a card is problematic,” Musisi said, recounting his experience at a NIRA office.

Committee chairperson Muwada Nkunyingi also raised complaints from citizens who had received new national IDs but were told their details had not been activated or linked to other government systems.

Geofrey Wokuri, Bungokho County South MP, highlighted the impact on young people seeking driving permits, saying payments related to training can expire while applicants wait for their identification details to become operational.

NIRA said the driving-permit system is still being integrated with the new identification platform but that an interim workaround is available. The authority is also dealing with the transfer of marriage-registration records from the Uganda Registration Services Bureau (URSB).

NIRA inherited about 1.2 million physical marriage records stored in approximately 302 archival boxes previously held off-site under a URSB contract.

Officials told the committee that NIRA had procured and migrated a system mirroring the former URSB platform after marriage-registration functions were transferred to the authority.

“The system is the same. It was just moved from… URSB because now URSB doesn’t have a marriage function,” the officials said.

NIRA is now responsible for registering civil, church, customary, Hindu and Muslim marriages. The card backlog comes against a wider identification gap, with an estimated 10.9 million Ugandans still outside the national register and about six million people already registered but yet to renew their identity cards.