Kenyans have been urged to respond to the SMS requiring them to indicate where they want to pick their Huduma cards.
According to Spinica Makori, an Assistant County Commissioner who is the team leader in charge of training, Kenyans have started receiving SMSs in an exercise that will go on until December this year.
Speaking at government guest house yesterday during a two days training of registration of persons clerical officers on the issuance of Huduma cards, Makori said Kenyans have a tendency of waiting until the last minute whenever there is such a national exercise.
“Now that we have officially launched the exercise countrywide and subsequently trained our officers who will be charged with handling and issuing the cards, what will follow is an SMS on your phone. Kindly respond to it,” Makori said.
“By ignoring the notification, you are not only subjecting yourself to unnecessary inconvenience but also putting pressure on the clerks who have to deal with huge crowds building up in the last-minute rush,” she added.
Makori also appealed to the clerks to ‘give the exercise the seriousness it deserves’.
“We are handling a card that has very sensitive information. It’s our duty to ensure that our officers understand their obligations and roles lest they find themselves in the wrong side of the law now that we have the data protection act in place,” she noted.
Garissa County Commissioner Mr. Meru Mwangi emphasized on the need for both Kenyans and the officers to take the exercise seriously.
Mwangi said that in the end, the government would want to reduce the number of cards Kenyans are carrying with them and collapsing them into one.
In 2015, the government initiated the registration of persons using a harmonized approach to address the challenges encountered during such exercise by the establishment of the Integrated Population Registration System (IPRS).