THE National Identification Authority (NIDA) has embarked on a county-wide exercise to collect and reprint low-quality cards that have been printed and distributed to the citizens.

Giving a press briefing yesterday at the ongoing Dar es Salaam International Trade Fair (DITF 2024), Head of Communications Department at the state-owned Authority, Geofrey Tengeneza, expressed that they have keep on receiving a number of complaints from citizens in various regions  over the poor quality of some of those IDs.

We have been receiving complaints from some citizens from Arusha, Kilimanjaro, Morogoro, Dar es Salaam and others that the identification cards given to them have had their pictures and names erased,” he said.

After conducting a thorough research and establishing the truth about the existence of the challenge, Tengeneza said NIDA has decided to launch a special exercise to collect the dilapidated identification cards from the Citizens in order to reprint them.

“I would like to take this opportunity to inform the public that any citizen with an identity card whose photo and text have been erased should return it to the offices of his ward, or the NIDA offices located near him so that it can be reprinted and given to him within a short time,” he said. 

He added, the Authority is working to ensure that the exercise is carried out with professionalism and quality in order to have the affected population provided with the improved ones.

“In order to keep up with the high speed of the need for national ID cards for citizens in this country, we had to print a lot of ID cards in a short period of time, a big exercise which experienced unavoidable faults,” Tengeneza explained.

He observed that, until now, the Authority has managed to print and issue identification cards to a very large percentage of Tanzanians, and the work is still continuing to reach out to the remaining few citizens.

"Basically, our statistics show that every Tanzanian who applied for a citizenship ID card and met the criteria set by the government has already had his ID card printed,” he explained.

“The challenge that exists right now is that many people, especially in the cities, have not gone to pick up their IDs, which is causing congestion at the stations,” he said.