ID Cards

Temwachi · Newbie

ID Cards

awmygawd · Guru

There might be more pressing issues the Gvt has to sort out. MW's finances are limited, even with the extra resources freed up by debt cancellation.

Temwachi · Newbie

My problem though is how do we develop the country if we dont keep records of the number of people in the country. People never register births, deaths and the like. We would like people to start saving but they cannot have bank accounts because you need a licence or passport for you to do that which most people cannot afford. Is the introduction of compulsory ID cards for malawians not a first step to development? We need to have up to date records of our people and how they are distributed to enter into any meaningful development.

The issue of the malawian passport for example, what percentage of non malawians hold malawian passports? Are we not going to end up having these people who are so good at exploiting situations coming to malawi to gain from the little that we will have achieved at the expense of malawians?

Atame · Veteran Member

The Govt has setup an office under OPC that is dealing with
the ID issues. I hope by next year tikambazina

mulomwe · Senior Member

It better be free or else the majority of pipo in the village will not have access to IDs if there is a fee to it.

rawn · Senior Member

Now the issue of the IDs is taking a New twist. Some MPs want to know why it was moved from Ministry of Home Affairs to The OPC may be some one can give a very good explaination on this. This might hinder the approval of ID Bill which is yet to be approvedby parliament.

TJ · Member

awmygawd wrote:

There might be more pressing issues the Gvt has to sort out. MW's finances are limited, even with the extra resources freed up by debt cancellation.

Can't agree more. For the ID cards to serve their intended purpose they will nee to be biometric. I doubt very much that we can afford this at the moment. The UK Govt is intending to introduce these and at the moment the issue of cost keeps cropping up.

What we need in Malawi is an effective registry office. We need to tighten things like issuing of birth and death certificates to avoid non Malawians gettings these for false passports. With the current state of affairs there is nothing in place to stop non Malawians to get the ID cards.