A 'technical hitch' lasting nearly an hour at Kisumu’s Huduma Centre forced workers to shut business as hundreds of residents, including students, sought IDs to register as voters on Wednesday.
A long queue quickly built after the service centre suffered lack of internet connection for about an hour.
Impatient residents became frustrated after waiting in the queue for over two hours to access the facility where they had to wait in another queue.
The center which offers over 20 government services has been busy, recording four times the number of clients since the mass voter registration exercise began two weeks ago, according to the manager Nicholas Kibuja.
Kibuja said the hitch was resolved, during which period the number of those on the queue had multiplied.
“We are all hands on deck, we are trying our best to improve the turnaround time so that we can serve as many people daily as possible,” he said.
He, however, echoed sentiments by Nyanza regional coordinator Wison Njega that a number of IDs said to be lying uncollected at Huduma Centres were simply those whose holders had them duplicated and were therefore not in a hurry to collect them.
A quick survey revealed that most of those visiting the centre were going to collect their IDs or to replace lost ones.