Five months after the “completion” of the Huduma Namba exercise, the National Treasury is now seeking an additional 1 billion shillings to finalise the exercise.
The Huduma Namba registration process that began on 18th February 2019, ending in May and targeted to register over 50 million citizens cost tax payers a total of 6 billion shillings.
Treasury acting Cabinet Secretary Ukur Yatani is now back in Parliament seeking the approval of additional funds to be spent on printing Huduma Namba ID cards.
The additional funds requested by Yatani are part of supplementary budget estimates in government spending amounting to 80.1 billion shillings which is currently before the Budget and Appropriation Committee.
According to CS Matiang’i, the registration exercise captured the details of 36 million Kenyans, a number that has been highly contested since the completion of the exercise.
The Huduma Namba project has had its fair share of hurdles and criticisms especially when Anand Venkatanatayanan, a cybersecurity expert and computer fraud forensic analyst filed a case in court challenging the government’s use of obsolete equipment to capture personal data during the exercise.
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