Suburban
SOME residents without national identity cards are facing difficulties getting vaccinated, Parliament heard this week.
Suburban Reporter
During the question and answer session on Wednesday, Harare North Member of the National Assembly Mr Allan Markham said some residents were being turned away from vaccination centres because they do not have IDs.
“My question is directed to the Minister of Home Affairs with regards to undocumented people.
“The issue of undocumented people has been there for many years, and there are two issues.
“One is; we have people without documents in this era of the pandemic and are being turned away for not having documents.
“The second one is on the issue of census which is approaching. How are we going to have proper statistics including and ages when certain people do not have those documents to prove who they are?” Mr Markham asked.
However, Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage Minister Kazembe Kazembe said people were allowed to be vaccinated even without identity cards.
In Harare West community leaders including the Member of Parliament Ms Joana Mamombe on Tuesday and Wednesday helped residents with confirmation letters that they lived in the constituency so they could get vaccinated at Marlborough Clinic and Mabelreign Satellite Clinic.
This followed a directive by the Ministry of Health and Child Care for community leaders to help people with letters confirming they lived in their areas to facilitate their vaccination if they did not have national identity cards.
Minister Kazembe said Government has since contracted a private company to produce identity cards given the challenges Government was facing in sourcing the materials.
“We are very much aware of the problems associated with access to documentation and Government has intervened.
“A private company was contracted to take over the production of IDs. This was necessitated by challenges our Government is facing with regards to foreign currency issues.
“As you would appreciate, our IDs and passports, we use a lot of consumables which are imported but that issue will become history very soon because the company that was contracted is seized with the matter.
“ In fact, only today we received a progress report to the fact that they are busy procuring all the required consumables to deal with the backlog of IDs,” said Minister Kazembe.
In a related matter, the Minister said the production of passports had improved but there was still work to ensure easy access to identity documents, which is a human right issue.
“Even with the passport issue, the situation has improved a bit. I am aware that – I will give a reference to that fact.
“A cousin of mine came to me yesterday wanting assistance to try and get a passport.
I told him I do not do that, go straight to the Passport Office; if you have a problem, call me.
“When he called me, he told me that he was asked to come and collect his passport tomorrow.
“Such is the improvement at the Passport Office but we may still have to do a lot to ensure that these documents are easily accessible.
“ I am pleased to say in the next few months we will see a big change since access to these documents is a human right.”
