Kenyans can now access marriage certificates online, govt announces
By Hilary KimuyuCouples who could not legalize their union can now access marriage certificates online. On Friday, Immigration and Citizen Services Principal Secretary Prof Julius Bitok said the certificates can be conveniently obtained after registering mutual consent on the phone or other electronic gadgets.
The Office of the Attorney General (AG) and the Department of Justice in conjunction with e-citizen has developed an online platform to enable clients seeking various services offered by the Registrar of Marriage to apply for all the services online.
“If you want to get married, you can now apply for a marriage certificate from the comfort of your phone where you apply online, go for interviews and get your marriage certificate online,” Prof Bitok said.
Bitok said a total of 5,318 services are now available on e-citizen as the government targets a tenfold rise in annual revenue from the digital platform.
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The services can be accessed using mobile phones and the government targets to double the number of services by the middle of the year.
Bitok was speaking in Nakuru where he closed a workshop on the digitalisation of services by national and county government ministries and agencies and onboarding them to the e-citizen platform.
The three-week meeting was also attended by digital services platforms providers and telecommunication firms.
Prof Bitok said the e-citizen platform will give Kenyans services cheaper since it will cut out travel and time spent on physical visits to government offices.
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“One of the key benefits of digitization is that it reduces the cost of services to citizens by the government,” he said.
According to the PS, the government is also banking on the onboarding of all its services on e-citizen to increase its daily revenue from Sh80 million to Sh1 billion.
“The other advantage is that this will increase the revenue by reducing leakages,” he said.
President William Ruto had directed the directorate of e-citizens, under the State Department for Immigration and Citizen Services, to ensure more than 5,000 services were digitalised to ease access to government services.
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