Home affairs minister calls on NIDA boss to resign

Dar es Salaam. Home Affairs minister, George Simbachawene has called on the director general of the National Identification Authority (Nida), Dr. Anorld Kihaule to resign, claiming that he has failed in his duty to ensure that Tanzanian citizens receive national identity cards on time.

Mr Simbachane made the remarks on Monday June 19, 2021 in Iringa while he was talking to officials of the institutions under his ministry, saying that since he was appointed as a minister in 2020, only one million IDs have been printed.
"I had promised in parliament that by August, those who had been recognized nationwide would have received their IDs.  
Now from January to June only one million IDs have been printed,”
"Next month is August, if you go there the challenges that they tell you are baseless.  I mean you fail to understand, I went there (Nida offices), so many times, I am exhausted, with all the noise I made but they produced only a million IDs, “said Mr Simbachawene.

He said he could not accept the situation and has told Dr Kihaule to tell the President that he has failed in his job.

"I have told him completely he has failed to do his job. Well he is the President's nominee, but if you fail, you go and  tell the President that you have failed because it is not possible every day we say same thing, we are tired," he said.
Describing the situation in the Iringa region where he visited, Mr Simbachawene said there are 477, 600 people who need to get national IDs, but so far only 191,000 people who have the national IDs.
Dr Kihaule who is a former lecturer at the Ardhi University (Aru) was appointed by late President John Magufuli to become the director of Nida on October 03, 2018.
In his 2020/21 report the Control and Auditor General (CAG) Charles Kichere said that during his audit, he found out that the Nida had spent Sh3.3 billion on cards that did not help anything.

The money was specifically spent on preparing a total of 426,757 cards which were found to have been damaged during the audit period.
Earlier this year Mr Simbachawene was quoted in the Tuesday  January 05, 2021 online edition of Mwananchi Newspaper as saying  in that month was the end of the problem of shortage of IDs, when it will be solved and the mass distribution would begin.
He said what delayed reaching that point early was the procurement process within the Government which had many components.
The minister said the number of Tanzanians identified by the end of 2020  had reached 18.5 million, but only 6.3 million have issued with IDs and that 12.2 million people had not been identified.