Residents of Tiaty constituency in Baringo County got a relief with the opening of a new Civil Registration Services (CRS) office at Chemolingot shopping centre.
The office will provide crucial birth and death registration services, offering a much-needed respite for locals who have long faced the burden of travelling long distances to Kabarnet town, some 300 kilometres away, to access these services.
Immigration Principal Secretary Julius Bitok said the new facility will ease the logistical and financial challenges faced by residents, many of whom reside in remote areas with difficult terrain and security concerns.
“We know some residents have been covering nearly 300 kilometres to travel to Kabarnet, and this has been at huge time and financial cost,” Bitok said, stressing that the new office would bring birth certificates and other services closer to the community at affordable costs.
The will increase birth registration rates among the predominantly pastoral population, where many children have gone unregistered due to the lack of access to nearby registration centres.
The government is also planning a mobile registration drive for National ID cards to target the large number of eligible residents who have yet to obtain the document.
This new CRS office is the fifth in Baringo County, joining existing facilities in Kabarnet, Mogotio, Ravine, and Kabartonjo.
Tiaty MP William Kamket and other local leaders had long criticized the distance to government offices, which they said contributed to the low levels of registered births and deaths in the constituency. Kamket pointed out that the journey from Kolowa to Kabarnet costs upwards of Sh3,000 one way and takes over a day, further burdening the already impoverished community.
The lack of proper registration has led to disparities in the allocation of government resources, especially in education. Baringo County Woman Representative Jematiah Sergon noted that many schools in Tiaty have far more students than the numbers reported in the National Education Management Information System (NEMIS), which affects funding and support.
Similarly, the low number of registered voters in Tiaty, which stands at 39,059 according to IEBC records, suggests that many eligible voters remain unregistered.
The launch of the new CRS office was attended by several local leaders, including Baringo North MP Joseph Makilap, West Pokot Woman Representative Rael Aleutum, and Keses MP Julius Ruto, who all praised the initiative as a critical step toward improving service access in the region.
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