WINDHOEK – The Ministry of Home Affairs and Immigration says it is fully ready to ensure that all eligible voters are issued with proper national identity documents for them to take part in the general elections next year.
The ministry’s spokeswoman, Salome Kambala, said the civil registration campaign would start early next month with Ohangwena, Kavango and Zambezi regions the top priority. Namibians will go to the polls at the end of next year to decide the new president and elect members of the National Assembly. Registration of voters by the Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN) is also expected to commence soon.
Many young people over the age of 18 and who have just turned 18, especially in rural areas, are known not to have national documents, which they need to take part in the elections. One needs to have a national document such as a birth certificate or an ID in order to be registered as a voter. It is with this in mind, Kambala says, that the ministry is working hard to fulfill its mandate of issuing birth certificates and ID documents to all citizens aged 16 and above, as well as death certificates to the families for those who have passed on.
“In fact we have already started – during the Ongwediva Trade Fair we issued identity documents to many students who have just turned 18 and never registered when they turned 16, these are the people that are expected to be part of the electorate next year,” said Kambala.
She says the three regions were selected as priority because of previous studies that showed many people in villages near the country’s borders do not have national documents. Kambala could not however explain why many people who reside in the country’s border areas are not registered as citizens. She was however quick to point out that a methodical assessment would have to be made to ensure that such people are indeed Namibian citizens before they are registered as such.
One of the methods that the ministry uses is to interview the applicant and if they are fairly mature in age they must explain why they were unable to register for national documents over the years and witnesses including the village headman also have to be called in to testify.
Kambala explained that the process of verification of citizenship may seem cumbersome but the ministry wants to make sure that identity documents are given to those who are truly Namibian citizens.
“Some people come to Namibia and register for citizenship because they just want to benefit from Namibia, but we make sure this does not happen,” Kambala explained.
The mobile teams will be dispatched to all the 14 regions of the country for two weeks and will work in close cooperation with constituency councillors. Birth certificates are issued on the spot if the applicant meets the requirements and has all the necessary supporting evidence, while identify cards are issued after a month.
Kambala said for those that are registering for identity cards through the mobile teams, their cards will be sent to the regional sub-offices for collection. Ohangwena has three sub-offices at Eenhana, Okongo and Oshikango. In Kavango the offices are at Rundu and Nkurenkuru, while in Zambezi the ministry has two offices, one in Katima Mulilo town centre and another one at Katima Mulilo hospital.
The ministry could not provide the statistics of people who are turning 18 who do not have any national identity documents, because the information has been recorded manually.
Kambala said the automation of birth records is progressing well and yielding positive outputs. Once it is completed, the ministry will be able to tell how many people are turning a certain age in a given year, and also provide statistics of people who have died in a certain period which will be helpful to the ECN in updating its voters’ registration roll.
The Ministry of Home Affairs and Immigration was allocated N$418 million for the 2013/2014 financial year of which civil registration is among the programmes budgeted for.
By Tonateni Shidhudhu