Law In The Offing To Address “Born Again Certificates”- Birth Registry

Reverend Kingsley Asare Addo, Acting Registrar, Births and Deaths Registry, said a new birth and death law is in the offing to address issues of adult and late registration of births.

He described such issues as “born again certificates” because they were people who already had birth certificates but because they wanted to change some information about themselves, they ended up doing multiple registration.

Rev. Addo was speaking at the second virtual Results Fair in Accra organised by the Ministry of Monitoring and Evaluation.

The Event which was on the theme “Promoting Efficiency and Accountability in Public Service Delivery,” offered agencies and Ministries implementing the 17 priority areas to share their achievements to the public.

The Acting Registrar said when the law becomes operational, the Registry would collaborate with the Ghana Health Service to set up offices at the district level and focus on registration at birth to curtail those pitfalls.

He said the Registry was in discussion with the government to help digitise its over 16 million manual records to address the challenge of multiple registration and improve service delivery.

Rev Addo said in 2013, the government waived fees for children born within a year for birth certification, and urged parents to take advantage of the policy.

Responding to a question on whether an individual could make a name change on the birth certificate, the Registrar said it could done by going through a process including the swearing of an affidavit .

He urged the public to apply for the extraction of birth certificate when they lose a birth certificate, adding going for a new certificate would amount to multiple registration.

Rev Addo noted that if well resourced, the Registry could provide timely and accurate data for identification and legal purposes, mentioning shortage of human resource to propel its mandate and financial constraints as the main challenges facing the organisation.

He said the country was facing developmental challenges because it had not developed ways of using “factual data”, stressing it was time the Registry was given the needed attention to function effectively.

He said lack of vehicles and motorbikes was affecting the Region’s 70 per cent registration quota for the year, but expressed the hope that they would fill the gap in due course.

Source: gna