Photo: Samuel Simiti/The Star

Voters line up to cast their ballots in Kenya's 2007 presidential election.

More than 45,000 youths in Coast may miss out on the voter registration exercise and thus fail to take part in the general elections for lack of ID cards.

Coast chief registrar of persons Aggrey Masai said yesterday some 45,176 IDs lying uncollected in the region. "In order for these people to register, they must come and collect these documents that are necessary for the process," he said.

This comes as voter registration is expected to kick off on Monday according to the calendar released last Monday by IEBC chairman Issack Hassan.

The national ID card is one of the requirements needed for registration as voters and voting. Masai said Malindi town in Kilifi leads in the number of uncollected ID cards with 11,642 followed by Mombasa with 1,125.

He told those in remote parts of the region to collect their IDs at the chiefs' offices as they have already dispatched them. "The system is now efficient. Like yesterday, we received close to 9,000 ID cards from Nairobi which will be dispatched to various locations," said Masai.

Masai said the ongoing mobile registration by Kenya Transition Institute is a success. He said many youths are registering. He is opposed to use of waiting cards to register. He said everyone registered will be able to register as a voter.

Masai also called for those with first generation IDs to replace them with new ones to make work easier for IEBC during registration. Already, some 1,200 ID cards have been delivered to the Tana Delta IDPs.