Govt to register and give prisoners National IDs

By Ritah Kemigisa.

Government is set to roll out registration and issuance of national identity cards to prison inmates.

This has been revealed by the minister of state for internal affairs Obiga Kania after members of parliament on the defense committee asked him to clarify on whether they had plans of registering them to have national identity cards.

Kania was appearing before the committee together with the prisons commissioner general  Johnson Byabasaija to present their quarter one performance for the year 2018/2019.

Obiga said the law does not bar government from issuing IDs to prisoners and that they are waiting for the National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA) to finalise issuing national identity cards to school children and Ugandans abroad.

However some of the mps were not satisfied with government’s decision to start with Ugandans abroad and exclude Prisoners.

However Obiga said registering prisoners has a lot of modalities that need to be followed.

However the prisons commissioner general Johnson Byabashaija said they will need to first sort out those without IDs since some are imprisoned with nationals IDs.

Written by David Kugonza