NRB Director Mphatso Sambo says Identity Cards are meant to expire because the card is plastic and therefore plastic must expire.

While stressing that what expires is the Identity Card and not one’s citizenship, Sambo says a person’s features change every 10 years hence the need for the national ID card to expire so that the individual gets a new one which reflects how they are looking.

According to Sambo, at the time of coming up with National IDs, Malawi had no robust mechanism of recording deaths, adding that the expiry of the ID was put in place as a way of ensuring that those still alive come back and renew their IDs.

-Times 360