Hundreds of Homa Bay residents who turned up for the National Integrated Identity Management System registration were forced to return home over machines failure.
The residents returned home for the third day on Friday after registration assistants failed to operate the machines due to poor networking.
Since the exercise begun on Wednesday, a number of residents who sought the registration at the offices of assistant chiefs across the county failed to get the service.
The county expects to register about 1.6 million people at 1,396 registration centres.
“The machines are supposed to be connected to the main server in Nairobi for them to work well. But the connection has not been done hence the registration assistants cannot operate them,” an assistant chief said.
The administrator said they have been facing difficult moments turning away residents who are eager for the registration.
“Residents crowd our offices with eagerness to be registered but we have to tell them to go back,” the administrator said. Residents expressed their dissatisfaction with the failure.
Mary Anyango and Kevin Omondi said they took their time come for registration but were disappointed.
“We’ve been coming here every day but not served on grounds of low networking. Most of us are disappointed and have returned to their work,” Anyango said.
County commissioner Irungu Macharia said they whole county recorded similar problem of network breakdown.
Macharia said they were liaising with the Information Communication Technology experts to solve the anomalies. He said in some sub counties, the exercise began successfully in the morning hours but failed later.
The administrator told those who have not registered to be patient as the problem was being looked into.
“We have talked to the IT officials who are addressing the issue. I believe the exercise will kick off soon,” Machaira said.
The registration is expected to kick off effectively in some centres to day if the problem is solved.
