The government is unable to process birth certificates as a result of a paper shortage, affecting thousands of parents whose children need to join school and those applying for passports.

Interior Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki admitted that the situation is serious but was being addressed, promising to have it solved in the next few months.

He also admitted that the Civil Registry department was facing a serious shortage of staff which he said had contributed to the current situation.

Kindiki, who was making his maiden address to the National Assembly during the newly introduced session to respond to questions by members, said the problem started earlier last year but the new Kenya Kwanza administration plans to address it.

“The Civil registry is currently in need of over 2,000 extra staff. We have asked the Public Service Commission to put that into consideration,” Kindiki told MPs.

Death certificates, which are a requirement for families to carry out services such as transfer of property, are also difficult to come by.

He was responding to a question by Gilgil MP Martha Wangari who wanted to know what measures had been put in place to address the shortage.

“We admit that we have challenges in the availability of Form P1 and it’s a problem that started last year around April 2022.The challenge is arising from the capacity at the Government Press. The Government Press has not been modernised for the longest time,” Kindiki said.

Wangari told the CS that the situation was dire and pleaded with him to ask the Ministry of Education to relax the requirement to produce a birth certificate by parents seeking to enrol their children in schools. “The struggles parents are going through are serious, if the government can lessen the requirements needed to enrol pupils it would be a welcome move,” pleaded Wangari.

Kindiki said the equipment the institution has and the human resource capacity does not allow them to print enough security documents including the forms quick enough to meet the rising demand. “I have attached three letters which we as the Ministry have written to the Government Printer requiring them to increase the speed at which they are supplying us with form P1,” he said.

The agency has been supplying 50 books of 400 forms per week at the moment which is not even a third of demand.

“The demand is over 1,000 books of that size so you can see we are supplying less than almost a third less than half of the requirement,” he explained.

Kindiki added, “the government has changed the management at the Government Printer because we believe that part of challenge is innovation of leadership at that unit to provide off budget solution to some of the challenges that the country is facing in terms of addressing the current problem”. “I can comment comfortably that after changing the management, the Government Printer is now stable. I have approved an equipment modernisation programme which will not involve the government spending any money because it’s through a lease of equipment where over time we will pay whoever owes those machines and after 10  years we hand over the machines to him,” he lamented.

Government printer

He added, “We have asked the Civil Registry department to give the Government Printer the projections for the rest of the year and we are working to see how that demand can be met pending the modernisation programme so that the demand can be met as soon as possible.” “I want to assure the House that when I come back the members will have positive feedback. We believe the registration of the birth of our children and the death of our departed person should not be aggravated because of absence of documents.

Shortage of staff at the Civil registries in parts of the country are dire that work has literally stalled. Vihiga County for instance with a population of about 600,000 people and has only one office dedicated to civil registration.

It is unclear how long the crisis will last while parents’ pain and anger continue to pile over the unnecessary shortage.

Frustrated applicants countrywide have for three weeks been lining up waiting for the crucial documents, often having to repeatedly return to the issuing offices to no success. New applications are, however, still being received despite the shortage.