• Accessing public and private healthcare services for women.
The Ministry of Health (MOH) and various public healthcare centres and hospitals
under its authority began gradually introducing a policy in late 2019 that required
a physical national ID card to be shown to access the public healthcare system and
for the NIN to be captured in hospital registers. The policy appears to have been
applied inconsistently by different health centres but continues to be the formal
policy directive.
• Raising complaints about Ndaga Muntu.
The Ugandan government has an obligation under international human rights
law as well as domestic law to provide individuals whose human and legal rights
are affected by Ndaga Muntu with the opportunity to raise complaints, redress
grievances, and find remedies for any violations of their rights. There are
formal grievance redress mechanisms associated with the Senior Citizens’ Grant
programme and through Health Management Units, but most complaints seem to
be raised through the LC1 Chairperson in a person’s local village. An accountability
mechanism specific to the Ndaga Muntu system, as foreseen in Section 83 of ROPA,
appears to be non-existent at present.
1.
“Some people those machines refused”: Registration
for the Ndaga Muntu system
Figure 4 Disgruntled older people in Namayingo who have been unable to register or have errors on their National IDs.
In Busia, we visited the home of a woman who recounted some of the difficulties
her family faced trying to obtain a Ndaga Muntu for her 95-year-old mother. As her mother
lay in the bed beside her, she told us how her mother had been sick and unable to attend
the registration exercise. As a result, her mother was not able to obtain her NIC and was cut
off from social assistance programmes. Mass registration for Ndaga Muntu began with an
enrolment drive that started in 2014,66 when many were encouraged by their Local Council
26
Chased Away and Left to Die