A number of parents were forced to spent their night in the cold at Makueni County Headquarters based at Woote Town on Wednesday 22nd February ,2018 to obtain their children’s birth certificates from the office of registrar of persons in charge of Makueni District.
This comes after the introduction of National Education Management Information System where all the students across the 47 Counties in Kenya are required to be registered to the programme.
The Makueni parents were forced to spent the night in the cold due to the deadline of the registration which was unavoidable but it was later extended to March 31st to enable learners who were yet to obtain the birth certificates to collect the document.
The parents accused the government for implementing the process yet they lacked enough manpower and resources to carry out the process. They said the officials from the registration department should have been dispatched to villages to make it possible and easy for more parents to access the service.
Rather than picking a group of 80 parents daily, and issuing the documents to them and leave the rest of the parents queue for the same document, they world have issued the documents at polling stations or the chief’s office instead of letting a large form in the county’s headquarters office.
The parents complained that the number of people seeking the certificates is high yet only few officers are handling the applications which led to overcrowding in the offices due to the pressure of the deadline issued.
“I have endured the cold and mosquito bites the whole night. I wish the documents could be issued at the chief’s office,” said Monica a parent who slept on the grass outside the offices.