enrolment forms. Whereas previously only the yellow slip with the NIN written on it
was necessary to collect the payment from PostBank, now beneficiaries needed to once
again produce their NIC or they would not be registered for the new account. Given the
circumstances, it is unlikely that beneficiaries fully understood or consented to the capture
of their personal information, including biometrics, or understood their bank account and
relationship with this new, commercial bank.
Figure 18. Fingerprints being captured.
A missing link with civil registration
Part of the obsession with physical presence at the payment point is related to
the fact that death registration in Uganda remains extremely underprioritized. While NIRA
officially took responsibility for death registration in 2015, they have not yet been able
to make progress in improving rates of death registration. Instead, the responsibility has
increasingly fallen onto the SCG programme and local officials to track beneficiaries who
have died and to ensure that their names are removed from the list. Local government has
also been brought on board to try to identify deaths, but the ESP programme also introduced
a new restriction: if you miss three payment days in a row, ESP will now presume that you
are dead and will strike your name off of the beneficiary list. This information is apparently
not shared directly with NIRA. This is yet another example of missed opportunities in
Uganda’s digital ID system, with line ministries and, ultimately, beneficiaries carrying the
burden of mismanagement at NIRA.
3.
“Many people fall sick and stay home and die”: Access
to health care for women
In 2019, the Ministry of Health (MOH) began announcing that the NIC would be
a mandatory requirement to access any public health services.110 There were various
rationales given for this ‘integration’ exercise. At some of the larger, newer hospitals,
officials suggested that the new Health Management Information System (HMIS) required
health workers to capture the NIN of every patient visiting the health centre.111 The Health
Minister also alluded to the need to monitor the distribution of prescription drugs, an area
of rampant corruption.112
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Chased Away and Left to Die