By REBECCA MUSHOTA –
THE mobile National Registration Card (NRC) issuance teams are sufficiently equipped to handle any screening challenges that may occur during the exercise, Home Affairs Minister Davies Mwila has said.
Mr Mwila said the NRC issuance teams have a combination of officers that make the teams self sufficient to handle any age or nationality screening challenges that may arise.

. Mwila

Mr Mwila said in an interview yesterday that citizens should not worry that some people could be left out if their age or nationality was questionable because the mobile teams had various officers that were trained to deal with diverse issues.
Last week during an Electoral Commission of Zambia consultative meeting in Lusaka, Foundation for Democratic Process executive director MacDonald Chipenzi said that his institution had received complaints from members of the public that the mobile NRC teams were denying them NRCs because they were allegedly too old to get one.
Mr Mwila refuted the claims raised by FODEP and assured that the mobile teams had officers that were able to screen people.
“The mobile teams have put a system in place of screening people. The teams comprise officers from the National Registration, Passports ad Citizens Department, Immigration officers, Police officers and officers from the Office of the President,” Mr Mwila said.
He said the challenge that the teams were facing was that of collecting information from one district to another on time.
Mr Mwila said the flow of information was not as fast as it would have been preferred.
He said the first phase of the mobile NRC issuance exercise had just finished while the second phase would start as soon as the Treasury released funds.
Mr Mwila also said that the programme of digitalising NRC issuance was on hold until the end of the current mobile NRC issuance at the end of January next year.
He said the project was mainly supported by the United Nations Development Programme and partly Government.
He said the project was currently suspended because the department had channeled its funds toward the mobile registration exercise.
“We can’t be spending money on two programmes simultaneously. The mobile exercise is costly so we want to concentrate on that for now,” he said.
The digitalising of NRCs would start with a pilot project in Kafue and Chongwe.