The integration of the national identity card (ID) data with the public service payroll helped Government to eliminate 8,000 ghost workers, Keith Muhakanizi, the secretary to the treasury, has said.

Muhakanizi, who is also the finance ministry permanent secretary, said data collected by the National Identification Registration Authority (NIRA) was used to weed out ghosts from the Integrated Personnel and Payroll System (IPPS), which is used to pay public servants.

Muhakanizi’s revealed this during a presentation at the launch of a study on the socio-economic costs, benefits, and challenges of National Digital Identification Systems in Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania recently.

The study was conducted by Makerere University School of Public Health-ResilientAfrica Network (RAN) in partnership with the University of Nairobi and Tanzania’s Muhimbili University of Allied Sciences, with funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

RAN is a partnership of 20 subSaharan African universities, led by Makerere University.

“The national ID has helped us in many things, such as eliminating ghosts, identifying people during the recent COVID-19 food distribution exercise, reducing the use of cash, and in monitoring mobile money transactions.

‘‘We want to enhance the use of IDs in all other services within government agencies and we have started with revenue collection,” Muhakanizi said.

Asked which agencies were most affected by the ghosts, Muhakanizi referred to the public service ministry. Although the ministry’s permanent secretary, Catherine Bitarakwate, confirmed the development, she could not divulge details.

Four million yet to get IDs

During the online/zoom launch of the study, it emerged that about four million Ugandans, who applied to NIRA for IDs, have not received their cards.

The NIRA cyber unit manager, Christopher Kantinti, revealed that out of the 29 million applications, 15 million Ugandans have received their national IDs.

Kantinti said 10 million learners have also been registered, but could not receive IDs because they were below 16 years. These, he said, were only issued with National Identification Numbers (NINs).

Kantinti said if parents want to know their children’s NINs, they can dial *216# on their mobile phones and follow the prompts.

In a move aimed at curbing corruption in government-aided schools, a mass registration exercise for school children was conducted between May 29, 2017, and August 29, 2017.

This was after some headteachers of Universal Primary Education (UPE) schools were accused of inflating the number of pupils in their schools to fleece Government, which pays them facilitation grants based on enrolment.

Kantinti further explained: “There are 1.8 million cards that are ready, but their owners have not picked them. There are also about 800,000 applicants that were not cleared because they had applied for a second time. The remaining applications, numbering about two million, were not processed for several reasons.

Some were rejected because applicants did not provide the relevant information, some provided false information, while others were just lazy to follow up.” Kantinti revealed that 16 ministries, departments, and agencies were already connected to the NIRA database to ease service delivery, adding that they hope to increase the connections to include other entities, such as banks, once they sign memoranda of understanding.

Prof. William Bazeyo, the RAN chief of party in Uganda, commended USAID for the funding, saying the findings will be used by Government to make informed decisions.

The RAN deputy chief of party, Dr Roy William Mayega, who is also a lecturer at Makerere School of Public Health, took participants through the findings from a study carried out on 2,892 randomly selected respondents in 18 districts in April last year.

Cost of ID system

The national ID system was installed by a German firm, Muehlbauer ID Services GmbH.

According to the study, establishing and rolling out the National ID registration process cost $56.19m (sh208b). “The main cost driver was enrolment (52%), closely followed by pre-enrolment (46%), while card issuance costs were substantially lower (2%).

Ninety-seven percent of the costs were non-recurrent (or capital) costs. The cost of producing and issuing one national IDs was $4 (sh14,800).

The total adjusted value of the costs associated with establishing the national ID is $37.95m (sh140b),” the study noted.

The total savings from the payroll and pension funds payments as a result of being able to weed out ‘ghost’ payees was $10.19m (sh38b) in the first year of integrating into the national ID system, while the total estimated administrative savings by use of national ID systems for voter verification was $30,554,396 (sh113b).

In early 2016, the public service ministry announced that civil servants who will not have national identity cards by July 1, 2016, will be scrapped off the payroll. A number of them were removed and they have had to apply to be re-instated.