Mr Kwesi Boateng Agyei (inset) launching the Births and Deaths registry celebration day
The 15th Births and Deaths Registration (BDR) Awareness Creation Day has been launched on the theme: “Early Births and Deaths Registration: The key to providing Legal Identity for all”, on Thursday, in Accra.
The day would be preceded by public engagements and climaxed with a national durbar at Agona Nkwanta in the Ahanta West Municipal Assembly, on September 28, 2018.
Since 2004, the day has been celebrated, to drum home the importance of birth and death registration to the socio-economic development of the country and whip up public interest.
The Deputy Minister for Local Government and Rural Development, Mr Kwesi Boateng Agyei, said BDR generated the demographic indices required for policy formulation and national development planning.
He pointed out that the birth registration coverage had increased from around 17 per cent in 2004 to 64 per cent per annum, while death registration hovered around 20 per cent.
According to the minister, the figures were expected to further increase steadily until the country met the internationally recognised standard of 90 per cent coverage levels.
Mr Agyei said that weak Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) were due to “the tragedy of invisibility” in which, the poorest and most vulnerable people in society were unregistered and uncounted.
“This situation has been identified as the single most critical development failure in recent history,” he emphasised.
Mr Agyei said the inability of the registry to open more centres as planned, engage new staff to augment its strength and procure logistics to enhance monitoring and supervision of registration at all levels, was worrying.
He urged that the registry and other concerned bodies redoubled efforts to turn the situation around.
The ministry, on its part, Mr Agyei said had supported the registry to initiate strategies to facilitate performance improvement in the operations of the registry.
These, he said, included the review of the registration of Births and Deaths Law, computerisation of births and deaths, and the implementation community population register and mobile registration programmes.
The minister cautioned the public against non-registration of deaths and the indiscriminate interment of human bodies as they were against the country’s laws.
Acting Registrar, Birth and Death Registry, Rev. Kingsley Addo, said activities for this year’s celebration included mass registration and urged Ghanaians to take advantage of the opportunity.
He called for public support to carry out its mandate.
By Jonathan Donkor
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