Candidates sitting for this year’s Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) exams will receive the new Maisha Card before the end of the examination period, according to Immigration and Citizen Services PS Julius Bitok.
The issuance of these ID cards to candidates who will have turned 18 among the 965,000 students is aimed at easing access to university education and other tertiary institutions.
Speaking to the National Assembly’s Education, Research, and Technology Committee, the PS explained that the joint effort by the Ministries of Interior and Education will ensure that students joining universities and colleges are not disadvantaged due to missing identification documents.
“We have mobilized our registration officers across the country to issue Maisha Cards to eligible candidates. This will enable them to apply for Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) loans, scholarships, and other post-secondary opportunities, both locally and internationally,” Bitok said.
The PS also revealed that a paperless Maisha Card registration process is currently being piloted in Huduma Centres and National Registration Bureau (NRB) offices in county headquarters.
This new system is expected to reduce processing time, ensuring Maisha Cards are issued within 10 days.
“We’ve gone paperless. Applicants can apply for their ID cards through the eCitizen portal and then visit any Huduma Centre or NRB county office for biometrics, which are transmitted in real-time to the NRB headquarters in Nairobi,” Bitok added.
During the meeting, members of the Julius Melly-led committee raised concerns over delays in issuing ID cards to candidates who qualified to join universities earlier this year.
Tinderet MP Julius Melly noted that without IDs, students cannot access HELB loans or scholarships.
Bitok attributed the delays to court injunctions that halted the issuance of Maisha Cards, leading to a backlog of 600,000 unprinted IDs.
However, he assured the committee that the government had successfully lifted the court orders, cleared the backlog, and improved capacity by investing in new printing equipment and adopting a 24-hour work schedule.
“Our average daily applications are around 10,000, but we now have a printing capacity of 32,000. So far, we have printed over 1.8 million Maisha Cards, of which 1.29 million have been collected,” he said, urging those with pending cards to pick them up. He noted that over 569,000 cards are still uncollected, and applicants have been notified via SMS.
Responding to concerns that loan applicants were facing issues with HELB due to an extra digit on the Maisha Card, Bitok confirmed that the lender’s portal has been reconfigured to ensure compatibility and seamless application processing.
