NEC ready to share database with Nida
According to NEC director, their office had already verified a total of 5000 Biometric Voters Registration (BVR) which were ready to be handed over to Nida during their registration process.
What you need to know:
NEC director Ramadhani Kailima said yesterday that the fact that the two were all government institutions working for the betterment of the nation, sharing database was a welcome move.
Dar es Salaam. The National Electoral Commission (NEC) has said it is ready to share its database with the National Identification Authority (Nida) to fast truck registration and issuance of national IDs.
Nida is planning to re-start the botched exercise next month.
NEC’s reaction comes a few days after Nida acting director general Modestus Kipilimbi told The Citizen that his office would seek an executive order to allow it share database with the electoral body, whose database contains information of over 22 million Tanzanians.
NEC director Ramadhani Kailima said yesterday that the fact that the two were all government institutions working for the betterment of the nation, sharing database was a welcome move.
“We don’t have any problem if Nida officials anticipate to use our database because they want to speed up the exercise and minimize the cost of doing the work,” he said
He cautioned Nida against establishing new registration centers, saying the agency can use the local government authorities to simplify the process.
According to NEC director, their office had already verified a total of 5000 Biometric Voters Registration (BVR) which were ready to be handed over to Nida during their registration process.
NEC said, however, it was yet to receive official request to use its database from Nida.
Last week, the Nida said that it was finalising legal arrangements to start using the National Electoral Commission (NEC) database in registration and issuing national IDs.
The decision came amidst a covert turf with Nida in recent years over the control of a national database for Tanzanian citizens.
The two agencies crossed paths over NEC’s Sh293 billion biometric voter registration (BVR) project, with Nida officials reportedly being unhappy that its own ID project had been overlooked.
Nida had gone further to state that some forces in and outside the government may have conspired to have NEC launch the BVR project at the expense of Nida, whose own registration of Tanzanians was technically a replica of what NEC was doing.
