Beba Pay card and national biometric registration: The big brother syndrome

Public transport in Kenya has been a total disaster.

Unofficially, the government and people of Kenya have not only lost faith in its rehabilitation but have also declared themselves powerless over this crooked system.

The same hopelessness has been extended to the immigration department. Some people have speculated that 10 per cent of Kenya’s population (four million people) is made up of illegal immigrants from neighbouring countries and a few crooks from European countries.

The government’s solution to this menace is to carry out a new population census, re-register Kenyans afresh, collect their biometric data and register all their assets and investments so as to protect Kenyans from terrorists.

The Cabinet Secretary for Transport has also decreed that all Kenyans will be restricted from travelling freely across their beloved country unless they possess a “beba pay” card backed by a local bank.

This reminds me of George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four published in 1949 as a prophesy of a bleak time to come in the future.

The novel is set in an imaginary province called Airstrip One of the super state Oceania in a world of perpetual war equivalent to today’s terrorism, omnipresent government surveillance, and public manipulation, dictated by those in power.

In his novel, George Orwell expressed his fear that one day, citizens would no longer enjoy the peace and serenity of a world free of government scrutiny and control.

Let’s start with the much hyped “beba pay” system. Having travelled numerously to America, Canada, South Africa and a few countries in Europe, I must inform Kenyans that they have been duped. No country in the world has imposed restrictions on their citizens using cash money to pay for transport services.

Track your every move

The only thing that is done with regard to enforcing the use of cards is that special discounts are offered to those who pay using their cards.

The truth is that the government will track your every move from now henceforth since all the cards are connected to a central data base system. What if some corrupt government official sells the said information to thugs; will they not be able to track your every move?

For a minute, let us ignore the fact that what the Transport CS has instructed Kenyans to do is totally illegal. Assuming that Nairobians embrace this card system, how will my grandfather and his fellow village elders survive when they come to visit me in Nairobi?

Once he takes the old bus from the village to Nairobi city, will he take a mkokoteni (handcart) from the bus stop to my house?

I am also perplexed by the fact that a privately owned bank was given the rights to receive money on behalf of the government.

What this means is that every Kenyan will have to indirectly open a “beba pay” “transportation credit card” bank account with the bank which will hold the said money in “trust” until you and me use it. Being a project “for the people”, I would have expected the CS to have worked with a bank owned by the Government of Kenya.

While some people argue that forcing this “beba pay” card down Kenyans’ throats will rid the transport industry of corruption and extortion, the CS should not gazette laws that are unconstitutional. Matatu owners can still give their drivers cash to bribe traffic police.

As for the national “biometric” registration of people and property, I agree the government should automate its registry and have all the fingerprints it has in dusty files digitalised. I would, however, like to warn that if not properly managed, this might lead to more harm than good.

Kenyans would like to see the government set up a crime lab and be able to easily capture criminals at the click of a button, but the same crooked government officials who “lose” case files and destroy evidence might also use our data to frame us for murder and crime.

How will any innocent citizen be able to defend themselves against digitally certified biometric data provided to frame them?

Dickson Mulli is a businessman and innovator; [email protected]