No! Don’t give us new identification numbers!
The Sunday Nation
Nairobi,
26 May 2013
Last week, state agencies (NSSF, NHIF etc) announced that they are pushing for the adoption of a single identification number that will be used by all the entities. They revealed that they are working on assigning each individual a number that will be on all documents within three years.
That sounds great; but the agencies have forgotten that such a number already exists! We call it the National Identification (ID) number and every adult Kenyan has a unique one. Mine is 8845002 and I am 100 per cent sure that nobody else has a similar one. The few people who don’t are actually breaking the law because it is mandatory to register oneself upon attaining the age of 18 years.
It is the agencies that, in their own wisdom, chose to assign us their own numbers. They do this even though we give them copies of our ID cards when we enlist! Creating a new identification number is completely unnecessary and will only cause confusion.
All that the state agencies have to do is simply change their registry systems by abolishing the multitude of Personal Identification Numbers (PINs) that they have been using and falling back to the National ID number. This is a simple in-house affair that does not need to involve the registrar of persons, or even coordination with anyone.
But it is not just state agencies that have fallen into that trap: Banks, insurance companies, schools, universities, employers etc all like to issue their clients with new in-house numbers – variously named, accounts, policies, enrolment, admission, payroll and so on.
However, there are a few that have seen the light. The Higher Education Loans Board (HELB – why don’t they change from the word “Board” to “Programme” and become “HELP”?) uses the National ID to identify its clients. When you want to check you account status, you simply enter your ID number in their online system and voila!
The NHIF also uses the National ID for retrieval of client information but they also assign their own identification numbers.
So, there is no need to issue new ID numbers…current ones have been seriously compromised. That is, that there are many individuals with identical ID numbers.
I don’t think this is the case. Indeed I do recall that when the “new generation” ID cards were issued in the early 1990s, our identification numbers were retained even though the new cards came with new serial numbers.
The serial number tracks the card while the ID identifies the person. If you change your card (by acquiring a new name, for example), the new one will have a different serial number but your ID number will not change.
Generally, we have a big problem with numbers. We issue them out without even thinking what value they add. That is how we have accumulated so many of them to the point of losing our identity!
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