The failure by National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA) to register foreigners who are residents in Uganda, saw Government lose out USD14.780M about Shs54.472Bn in revenue.
The revelation is contained in the June 2022 Auditor General’s report to Parliament that queried the failure by NIRA to carry out its mandate of registering both Ugandans and foreigners residents in Uganda, where the Auditor General, John Muwanga warned that the failure to register foreigners poses a risk on Uganda’s security.
“NIRA was not executing its mandate of registering the resident aliens in the country. As a result, the authority failed to collect USD14.780M about Shs54,472,919,000 in revenue from 147,800 aliens in the last four financial years ending June 2021. Failure to utilize alien registration NSIS functionality makes the system underutilized and led to loss of revenue .this may also compromise national security leading to increased crime and failure to trace the alien perpetrators,” read in part the report.
While responding to the queries, NIRA informed the auditors that the alien registration functionality was not fully completed by the previous vendor and it stopped at data processing and assigning alien identification number and however anticipated that the new system will cater for it.
The development comes at the time a section of MPs like Bashir Ssempa (Mubende Municipality) raised concern over the growing corruption within NIRA that has made it easy for non-Ugandans to hold the national Identity Cards, citing cases in Mubende where officials have set prices that are paid for one to get hold of the national IDs.
He said, “When you come to Mubende, you would worry at how easy it is for Rwandese refugees accessing our IDs. With a lot of ease for as long as they appear and the monies are known and figures are set, you pay this and get the national Id. Why is it very easy for our people to access our national IDs?”
In response, Rosemary Kisembo the Executive Director of NIRA said that the corruption comes from the grass root and NIRA is simply at the Authority is at the receiving end noting, “On the issue of enrollment of non-Ugandans, I feel the pain of this committee and the corruption therein. However, we need to join hands right from LCI because NIRA is at the end of the chain. Someone brings us a letter from the LCI dully stamped, a document dully stamped by the GISO.”
Kisembo revealed that as of 31st December 2022, 26,150,929 people have been registered with NINs and 19m cards have been issued.
