‘We won’t change anybody’s date of birth again’ – Births and Deaths Registry warns

The Births and Deaths Registry has announced that the Registry will not change anybody’s date of birth in the country again.

Speaking at the launch of the 15th National Birth and Death Registration and Awareness Creation Campaign, the Director of the Births and Deaths Registry, Reverend Kingsley Asare Addo said, “one other disturbing phenomenon is the fact that people will want to come and change their date of birth and sometimes it is surprising the way some of us behave.

People have lived in this country and they are about 59 years old and when they are getting to 60 years old and when they are about to go on retirement, they remember that now their date of birth they have used all these years is wrong.

“The Births and Deaths Registry wants to retaliate and underline the fact that from today, we will not change anybody’s date of birth,”.he added.

“Whatever we put in our system, remains the same till you exit; we will make a policy statement on that. We don’t want a situation where our document will not be trusted. The credibility will be so eroded but when we issue birth certificates to people, then they come back and say they want verification letters to tell us that what we have issued is genuine. It is creating unnecessary work for all of us. We want a situation where the Ghanaian birth certificate will be respected wherever it is presented which means it should reliable and credible”.

Ten thousand staff of the Ghana Education Service (GES), in April were asked to provide documents to correct discrepancies in their dates of birth or be prepared to proceed on retirement.

Apart from the 10,000 staff who will go on retirement if they fail to do so by the deadline, 50,630 others, constituting 20 percent of the entire workforce of the GES, will be affected by the new directive later.