Man seeks court's intervention to clear confusion over three dates of birth

His birth certificate and national ID show he is 70, KRA Pin Certificate 66 and his passport 60 years. [Courtesy]

Age is just but a number, the saying goes. But that is not always true for everyone. One such person is Francis Paul Kerre whose identification documents show three different ages.

Tired of the tribulations the discrepancies in his age have brought him, Kerre has moved to court to have the matter resolved once and for all.

His birth certificate and national ID show he is 70, KRA Pin Certificate 66 and his passport 60 years.

Kerre now wants these details aligned to give him a peace of mind and spare him the many questions he sometimes has to answer.

He says an earlier plea to the registrar to rectify the anomaly did not bear fruit.

He contends that the person who prepared his birth certificate entered the wrong birth date. Court documents read that he has since confirmed the year he was born.

Kerre says he was born on October 15, 1954. This is the date in his KRA Pin certificate, which means he is 66.

“The petitioner avers that the error in the birth certificate was caused by the initial entry in his birth certificate when he was born and he has since confirmed his correct date of birth. The petitioner seeks court’s intervention to rectify his birth certificate and have the correct date of birth entered in the register and his birth certificate,” Kerre’s court papers read in part.

In the case, he says he was issued with a birth certificate dated October 15, 1950, which makes him 70 years old. This national ID adopted this date.

In his case where he has sued the registrar of births and deaths, and the Attorney General Kihara Kariuki, Kerre says that his uncle applied for his first passport which bore the same date as his ID and birth certificate.

He left for studies in Poland and later Germany. When he renewed his passport while in Germany, his second passport indicated that he was born on October 18, 1960. The new birth date means that he is 60 years old.

“That error has persisted since then and my efforts at having the date rectified has not been successful,” he says.