This is why Ugandan national IDs expire- NIRA

The National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA) has explained circumstances under which Ugandan national identity cards expire , after which they must be renewed.

Several Ugandans have in the past raised concern over the expiry of national IDs, questioning as to whether, one’s citizenship also expires.

However, speaking during a workshop for journalists in Kampala, NIRA Executive Director, Rosemary Kisembo explained the rationale behind having an expiry date for national IDs.

“We are learning a bad habit that one who shouts loudest wins. A national ID is grouped as a security document and expires. Even your ID of school expires and the following year you will get another one,” Kisembo explained.

She said whereas citizenship doesn’t expire, the document expires .

“The security features in the national IDs degenerate with time. Those cards(national IDs) you holder will expire very soon won’t be able to be read. For the features therein, people trying to read them will have difficulty in doing so.”

The NIRA Executive Director said many people change in appearance and changing national IDs would help them have updated photos captured.

“Body features like the face also degenerate with time. It is a call of nature. Even if we didn’t put an expiry date, the wear and tear of the cards would reduce the potency of the security features. The fingerprints are sometimes eroded and it is why sometimes you go for simcard registration or any other place and you are told your fingerprint cant be read by the machine.”

NIRA was created by  the Registration of Persons Act 2015 and this year, it started issuing cards, a big chunk of them that are set to expire next year.

Kisembo said the 10-year expiry time was just a timeline to show that after this period, most of the features on the national IDs would have worn out and needed to be changed.

“It is not a political, social, economic or legal game but nature. Even if we removed the date of expiry from a card, 10 years you would go to a place and it won’t be read.  We just thought it administratively that in the 10^th year the features would be degerated.”

Kisembo added that with the current national register having only 27.4 million people, they are looking at adding at least 18 million Ugandans during the forthcoming mass enrollment exercise all over the country.