Kenyans across the country are being urged to collect their outstanding National Identity cards, as over 400,000 cards remain unclaimed at various registration offices and Huduma Centers nationwide.

The National Registration Bureau (NRB) has issued a pressing appeal to citizens to visit the stations where they submitted their applications to retrieve their cards as soon as possible.

Principal Secretary for Immigration and Citizen Services, Julius Bitok, announced that the NRB has successfully cleared a significant backlog of card applications, printing a total of 505,197 cards in the past two weeks. Of these, 162,856 are new cards, while 344,341 are duplicates.

The surge in card production was made possible by the recent lifting of a court order that had temporarily halted the issuance of the Maisha Card.

This development allowed the NRB to resume processing both new and duplicate ID cards.

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"By July 25, 2024, the NRB had received 451,228 National ID card applications (130,302 new and 320,926 duplicates) that were in various stages of production," Bitok stated. "

Since then, the bureau has processed an additional 108,697 applications, bringing the total number of printed cards to 559,925.

Nairobi County currently holds the highest number of uncollected ID cards, with 55,327 cards still awaiting collection. Kiambu and Nakuru follow closely with 37,708 and 28,581 unclaimed cards, respectively.

Other counties with significant numbers of uncollected cards include Kisumu, Mombasa, Kisii, Murang'a, Uasin Gishu, Kajiado, and Bungoma.

"We urge applicants to visit the registration station where they submitted their applications to collect their cards as soon as possible," Bitok emphasized noting NRB has cleared the backlog and is now processing new requests efficiently.

The NRB has also implemented measures to expedite the card production process, including increasing its printing capacity to 32,000 cards per day and introducing a 24-hour service dedicated to card processing.