State House has come out to deny reports that the controversial Huduma Nama is linked to global payment service provider Mastercard.
Replying to a story by Aljazeera titled, ”If you are a Kenyan citizen, your private data is not safe”, the President’s chief of staff Nzioka Waita said that was ‘false information’.
In the story published last month, Aljazeera had written, ”Further digging reveals the government has done a deal with MasterCard to link the Huduma number to a prepaid card with chip and pin that will be used by citizens to pay for an array of government services. The government denies that the two initiatives are connected, but given similar initiatives in countries like Nigeria, there is credible fear that the initiatives will eventually be combined. Regardless, the Huduma programme will add yet another number and card to the litany of numbers and cards that Kenyans must wield to prove their Kenyan citizenship to their increasingly predatory state.”
Waita took to Twitter to rubbish those claims, when one user tweeted a link to the story. He called it a case of ‘poor journalism’.
This is false information & a case of poor journalism by @AlJazeera they should simply ask @InteriorKE to clarify any gaps in information that they may have had.There is no MasterCard linked to the @hudumanambake they are confusing with payment option for @HudumaKenya services
— Nzioka Waita (@NziokaWaita) April 24, 2019
