More than 308,000 Kenyans are walking around without critical personal documents — not because they haven’t been processed, but because they haven’t been picked up.
Huduma Kenya issued an urgent directive on Thursday, May 21, calling on citizens to visit the nearest Huduma Centre and collect their ready documents without further delay. The batch includes 178,939 national identity cards, 100,131 smart driving licences, and 29,138 birth certificates — all processed and waiting.
“The documents have arrived! Pass by any Huduma Centre and get sorted,” the agency said in a public notice.
The appeal carries extra urgency given the looming threat of a full operational shutdown at the Government Printer — the sole entity authorised to produce Kenya’s secure civil documents, from national IDs and birth certificates to title deeds.
The Printer is reportedly crippled by a staggering KSh 475.4 million debt to suppliers of specialised, security-grade raw materials, compounded by severe treasury budget cuts. If the National Treasury does not urgently release funds to clear these arrears, the country could face an unprecedented halt in new document production before the fiscal year ends.
In plain terms: the documents already sitting at Huduma Centres may be the last batch for a while. Those who delay collection risk being caught in a bureaucratic freeze at the worst possible time.
The backlog is not new. Earlier this year, Huduma Kenya flagged that over 462,500 national ID cards had accumulated uncollected across the country, many of them duplicates that further complicated the management of the backlog.
Officials have repeatedly warned that uncollected documents strain the National Registration Bureau’s processing capacity and create administrative complications for applicants trying to access banking, employment, government welfare, and mobile money services — all of which require a valid national ID.
To protect citizens from fraud during the collection process, Huduma Kenya clarified that official notifications on document readiness will only be sent via SMS or phone calls from two designated numbers: the toll-free line 1919 or 020-690-0020. The public has been warned to disregard any communication from other sources.
On a positive note, Cabinet Secretary for Interior Kipchumba Murkomen recently gazetted a six-month extension of the fee waiver for replacement of national IDs and alteration of personal particulars under Legal Notice No. 76 of the Registration of Persons (Amendment) Rules, 2026. The waiver now runs until October 30, 2026, allowing citizens who lost documents or need biometric updates to process their requests free of charge at any Huduma Centre.
To ease access, several major Huduma Centres — including GPO, City Square, Eastleigh, Kisumu, Mombasa, Nakuru, and Nyeri, among others — have extended operating hours from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Kenyans are advised to carry their collection slips and valid identification when visiting a Huduma Centre.
