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Midlands Bureau Chief
THE Government is set to embark on a mop-up mobile registration exercise aimed at issuing national identity documents, birth and death certificates across the country as part of efforts to ensure all citizens have access to primary documents.

The exercise, which will be spearheaded by Civil Registry Department, follows a successful blitz undertaken last year which saw three million people being issued with documents.

The six-month mobile registration exercise commenced in April and ended in September last year with a target of two million national documents.

The exercise is in line with the dictates of the National Development Strategy 1 (NDS1) and also coincides with the forthcoming harmonised elections.

In an interview yesterday, Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage Minister, Kazembe Kazembe said birth certificates and national identity cards are vital documents, hence the Government’s desire to ensure everyone acquires the documents.

Mrs Doreen Moyo (left) receives copies of birth certificates for her children during a mobile registration exercise in Tsholotsho in this file photo

“The Government is set to embark on a mop-up mobile registration exercise to issue national identity cards and birth certificates to people who are yet to get the documents. This follows a successful exercise that we carried out last year where three million documents were issued with documents,” he said.

Minister Kazembe said the forthcoming exercise will be done at no cost.
The programme will be rolled out before the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) embarks on its voter registration blitz.

“The mop-up registration exercise will be done before the elections to ensure everyone entitled to the documents is eligible for voter registration,” he said.

Constitutionally, Presidential, Parliamentary and local authority elections are supposed to take place in July or August.
Zimbabwe held its last general election on July 31 in 2018 with President Mnangagwa taking the oath of office on August 26, two days after the Constitutional Court dismissed a court challenge to presidential poll results by opposition leader Nelson Chamisa.

Minister Kazembe said the six-month mobile registration exercise which commenced in April and ended in September last year was a successful exercise.

“We managed to issue over three million documents. The main purpose of the exercise was to reach out to all eligible Zimbabweans to obtain birth certificates, national IDs as well as death certificates,” he said.

The Civil Registry said it issued 3 203 389 documents for free in line with President Mnangagwa’s directive that identity documents should not be sold.

The exercise was carried out with a budget of $12,1 billion.
Some of the registration requirements were relaxed to cater for as many people as possible.
Statistics show that 1 804 256 birth certificates,1 345 719 national identity documents and 53 414 death certificates were issued during that period.