Births and Death Registry to automate districts offices

The Births and Deaths Registry, as part of its computerization system, would automate all districts offices and link them to the regional and national database.

The system would reduce the processing time for birth and death certificates and the data required for planning as well as counter the incidence of fraudulent certificates perpetrated by illegal people.

This was contained in a speech read on behalf of Mr Julius Debrah, Minister of Local Government and Rural Development on Thursday to launch the celebration of the 11th Births and Deaths registration awareness creation day in Accra.

He said with support from the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund, a mobile phone application technology would be rolled out to register births in the rural and hard to reach areas to facilitate transfer of data captured at the community level to aid planning.

Mr Debrah said the Registry had established the community population register to register communities by households and regularly updates the list of people resident in the community with details of their demographics.

He said the programme was currently ongoing in the Central, Eastern, Northern, Upper East and Upper West regions and that such information could be used effectively by the district assemblies for planning purposes at the community level.

Mr John Agbeko, the Registrar of Births and Deaths, said births registration coverage stood at 65 per cent while that of death stood at 23 per cent which is below the acceptable standards of 90 per cent.

He said as part of this year’s celebration of births and deaths registry will climax the event with a national durbar in Adaklu Goefe in the Volta Region on Nov.25 under the theme: “Civil Registration, Crucial for Inclusive Social and Economic Development”.