President William Ruto has suffered the latest blow in his attempts to increase costs that will cater for birth and death certificates in a bid to collect more revenue from kenyans.
According to reports, the government through the Immigration Principal Secretary Julius Bitok, had directed that Birth and Death certificate fees be increased by multiple in what the PS explained was because of inflation.
However, Members of the Delegated Legislation Committee have directed the Ministry of Interior to revoke the Registration of Persons (Amendment) rules claiming that there are too many substantive errors in the regulations that can’t be changed by mere corrections.
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“On a number of issues that we have raised which are very substantive, a corrigenda may not be sufficient. You may need to republish and revoke what you have already provided, because if we consider it in the manner it is, it might be very difficult to achieve the intended purpose,” said committee chaired by Samuel Chepkonga.
Bitok however strongly defended the regulations insisting that they went through thorough public participation and they will help in making Kenyans register to the new Maisha card.
“We went to the field and we did 820 meetings of public participation on this Maisha Namba, we have the report on what Kenyans said, This is so important for our national security, this ID is secure and temper proof, it’s a very secure card.”
We are charging Ksh.1,000 for correction of errors; this is because there is a lot of attempt to fraudulently change documents. it’s also a national security issue to avoid someone trying to manipulate the system to change their particulars,” he explained.
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However, the explanation was rejected by MPs as Births and Deaths registration (Amendment) rules proposed Ksh.1,000 for the registration, re-registration of births and making a correction in a birth or death entry which were previously offered free of charge.