Public Service, Youth and Gender Affairs Cabinet Secretary (CS) Margaret Kobia on Monday launched new working hours for Huduma Centres in the country.
The new hours are set to be piloted in two centres, Huduma Centre GPO and Huduma Centre City Square Nairobi.
The extended working hours will now be from 6:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. beginning Monday to Friday unless in special circumstances where the centres have been opened on weekends.
Prof. Kobia explained that the new schedule was an aim at improving the accessibility of services to the common citizen.
[caption caption="Poster from Huduma Centre explaining new working hours"]
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While launching the extension, the CS noted that only selected services will be availed to the public during the extra hours.
Some of the services offered at the centres include the issuance of birth certificates and identity cards, registration of business names, companies and welfare groups among other services.
In April, President Uhuru Kenyatta issued a directive that required the service centres to work closely with county governments.
The president required all centres to create space within their premises that would be allocated to the county governments to conduct a few functions.
"I have directed our Ministry of Public Service, Youth and Gender to avail space in our Huduma centres for any county govt that wishes to bring under one roof it's systems for issuing business permits," Uhuru stated in an address to the 2018 Annual Devolution Conference.
A Huduma Card is also set for launch in October 2018 in line with the goal of making services accessible for Kenyans.
"This will be the largest rollout of a formal Government electronic payments solution in East Africa and will see both the Kenyan Government and its citizenry benefit from the safety and convenience of electronic payments," Huduma Centres CEO Dennis Mutuku outlined in a past address.
[caption caption="Huduma Centre CEO Dennis Mutuku addresses a conference on the soon to be launched Huduma Card"]
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