The National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA) has clarified how old National ID cards will be handled as Ugandans begin receiving the new, upgraded high-tech National IDs.
NIRA Registrar Claire Olama emphasized that old National IDs remain important personal documents and will not be confiscated during the issuance process. Instead, they will be marked administratively to indicate that they are expired but remain readable.
“What we for long prayed for, what we registered and hoped to get, was our new, beautiful, new-tech cards. Now it’s time to begin to pick them up,” Olama said.
“When you come, you need your old card to identify you. We look at it, we check if you’re the one, and once we find that your card is ready, we ask you to provide your biometric—your fingerprints or your iris—so that we complete the process and issue your new National ID.”
Olama explained that the old card is returned to the owner after a careful administrative mark is applied.
“This old card remains your document, and you will still take it home. However, the NIRA officer must put an administrative mark in the form of a single punch on a blank corner that does not have data. Make sure the officer does not punch your barcode because we need your old card for posterity. It must remain readable,” she said.
The punch mark indicates that the card has expired and the document number is no longer active, without interfering with identification features.
“After that, you walk away with two cards—one very clean, with no mark on it, and the old one with an invalidation mark in one corner that does not compromise its readability,” Olama added.
She urged the public to follow official instructions and maintain order at collection centres.
“Happy card picking. I hope we will be people of decorum. We will line up, we will be patient, and as NIRA, we promise you that everybody who asks will get feedback from us about their application, and we shall all get national IDs,” Olama said.
NIRA continues to issue the new generation cards at designated centres nationwide.
