A campaign to confiscate national identity cards issued illegally to immigrants will start next week.
Foreigners from Ethiopia and Somalia had infiltrated the issuance of the vital document and were acquiring it at the expense of the locals, North Eastern provincial commissioner Kiritu Wamae told residents at the Garissa Baraza Park yesterday.
In addition to taking back the ID cards obtained illegally, the Government would also deport their holders, said Mr Wamae.
Investigations indicated that foreigners were getting the cards after bribing ID card vetting committees, said the PC as he warned that such committees risked being disbanded over corruption allegations.
The administrator urged the locals to collaborate with government officials to flush out immigrants who obtained ID cards and were living in the border districts of Mandera, Ijara, Wajir and Garissa. He said the immigrants were denying many Kenyans jobs.
Garissa mayor Siyad Osman said the refugees were obtaining the document after parting with Sh15,000, which they paid to clerks at the registrar of person’s office and vetting committees comprising chiefs and village elders who are meant to help in identifying genuine Kenyan applicants.
Corruption at the district’s registration office had locked out genuine applicants, who were not considered in recruitment to the armed forces, said Mr Osman, and called for the vetting committees to be disbanded.
Mr Wamae further disclosed that hundreds of eligible Kenyan youths were denied ID cards after their parents registered them as refugees at the height of the just-ended drought, so that they could get food ration cards issued by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in camps in Garissa District.
The PC cautioned parents, particularly those living near the Kenya-Somalia border and those near the camps, against registering their children as refugees.
Doing so would later deny them jobs and other benefits, because technically, they were not Kenyans, said Mr Wamae.
Last month 300 ID card applications from eligible youths in Dadaab and Alinjugur divisions were rejected by the national registration of person’s headquarters’ after their fingerprints showed up in the data bank for Somali and Ethiopian refugees.
At least 450,000 refugees live in the district’s Ifo, Hagardera and Dagahley camps in Dadaab Division, which are run by the UNHCR.
Source: Daily Nation, June 2, 2006 | 
