By: Mohamed M. Sesay
In a stakeholders consultative meeting held at the Sierra Palms Hotel in Freetown, the National Civil Registration Authority (NCRA) in collaboration with in the education sector and other partners, reached to a consensus for registration and issuance of the National Identification Number (NIN) for pupils in all schools to commence on the 27th – 5th of March 2023 for the Western Area and the Eastern Region respectively. The Authority also noted that the date for registration in other regions would be communicated in due course.
In his brief statement, the Director General of NCRA Mohamed Massaquoi on behalf of the board, welcomed the stakeholders to such a very pertinent meeting. He added that the meeting is one of the many engagements they had as stakeholders for the production of the NIN for pupils. He said last year cabinet approved the process of registering pupils across all government assisted and private schools across the country. He added that cabinet even urged Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Basic and senior Secondary Education, Ministry of Higher education to make robust commitment in materializing such cabinet directives.
Mohamed Massaquoi continued that since November 2022, they had piloted the registration. He therefore, noted that the stakeholder’s engagement was to inform and brief the respective stakeholders as to their preparedness of the process and to also discuss in putting forward better strategies for the process.
The Director General encouraged the stakeholders to be fully involved in the process in terms of monitoring as the NCRA could not do it all alone. He stressed that the process is very important as government policies would now be guided in terms of school enrolment, payment of school fees among other issues that provide reliable data.
Giving update on the School Registration Process, the Director of Operations Abubakarr Javombo, said they have developed key messages for registration of pupils. He said the process also caters for training of trainers, printing of school pupils personal details forms which is expected to be completed on the 19th of March 2023. He added that they are going to also train District Staff adding that, the exercise would be divided into two phases. He said phase one captures the Western Area and the Eastern Region whereas, the second phase would capture the Northern Region and the Southern Region. He continued that the exercise would be rolled out for two weeks for each of the phases.
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