WINDHOEK – The Ministry of Home Affairs, Immigration, Safety, and Security is set to conclude its extensive mass registration outreach program at the end of July, having successfully issued national documents to over 90,000 residents.

According to Namibia Press Agency, who spoke on Wednesday, the initiative, which commenced on February 5, 2024, had served 94,317 individuals by Tuesday. The program targets all 121 constituencies across Namibia, providing essential documents such as birth certificates, identity documents, duplicate documents, and processing citizenship applications. Witbooi emphasized the cooperation with constituency councillors to identify registration points and ensure community awareness of the outreach schedules.

The Deputy Minister highlighted the outreach’s broader goal of documenting undocumented and stateless individuals within Namibia. These records are being meticulously verified to facilitate the handling of their applications. A functional register is being compiled to assist in tracking these individuals once legislative measures, such as the Regularisation of Status of Certain Residents of Namibia Bill and the Statelessness Determination and Protection Bill, are enacted.

Witbooi stressed the importance of these upcoming bills, which are designed to address the complex issues of undocumented residents and statelessness, ensuring that those affected, including descendants and foreign spouses of individuals with outdated South West Africa IDs, have a pathway to regularize their status and potentially acquire Namibian citizenship.