17 Mar 2014

There has been overcrowding at the Civil and National Registration (CNR) office in Francistown due to limited bandwidth.

The Minister of Labour and Home Affairs, Mr Edwin Batshu said the limited bandwidth has given rise to poor performance of the births and deaths registration and the national identification systems. Mr Edwin Batshu said overcrowding had been there until November 2013.

He said the bandwidth problem has since been resolved giving rise to a significant improvement from overcrowding to manageable queues.

The minister said the current cause of queues at the office was due to the city being the main centre for accessing various services by customers from the catchment area.

Mr Batshu said many people who visited the city for various services including registration services prefer to use the Francistown registration office instead of utilising their respective offices such as Tonota, Sowa and Masunga among others.

“The other cause is the high demand of registration services such as births, deaths, national registration, marriages and societies,” he said.

Mr Batshu acknowledged the need for a second CNR office in Francistown. He further said his ministry has been sensitising people coming from outside Francistown to use their respective areas to ease the congestion experienced in the Francistown office. He said they would continue to embark on the publicity drive and appeal to MPs to do the same.

The MP for Francistown West, Mr Wynter Mmolotsi had asked the minister what was the cause of overcrowding at the national registration office in Francistown and what would the minister do to ameliorate the situation. ENDS