New system to facilitate birth registration launched
The Birth and Death Registry (BDR) has launched an automated birth registration system through the use of mobile phone technology. Under the initiative, officials of the BDR are expected to capture the information at the community level through mobile telephony, which will then be transmitted to a central point at the national level for processing of birth certificates.
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This means applicants will no longer travel to district centres to fill forms to process their birth certificates.
The project, which is under the auspices of the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, in partnership with the United Nations International Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and Tigo Ghana, will begin on a pilot basis in 300 registration sites in 91 districts in the country.
Launch
The Registrar of the BDR, Mr John Agbeko, who was speaking at the project launch in Accra yesterday, said the current system had a lot of challenges that made it difficult to efficiently register births.
“The introduction of the mobile registration technology will help to eliminate bottlenecks such as the reliance on paper, frequent shortage of registration materials, inaccessibility of some rural areas and loss of information,” he said.
Mr Agbeko said the BDR had positioned itself well by training some of its staff on how to migrate onto the new system.
Pilot
In 2013, the BDR commenced an analysis of Ghana’s registration system with the aim of rolling out a robust registration regime. The BDR management thought about how modern technology could be incorporated into the registration system to ensure efficiency. And with support from its partners, UNICEF and Tigo Ghana began a pre-pilot programme to explore the possibility of using mobile technology to facilitate the registration process.
The initiative was pre-piloted in 15 selected sites in the Greater Accra Region between December 2015 and February 2016. Data from 12 of the selected sites after the three months period indicated an increase in the number of births registered.
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It is projected that by the end of 2016, a total of 670,800 new births would be registered through the new system in the 300 selected sites.
It is also hoped that a successful roll out of the new registration system would improve Ghana’s National Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) strategic plan for 2020, which targets 100 per cent registration for all children.
Importance
A Lecturer at the University of Ghana’s Regional Institute of Population Studies, Professor John Kwasi Anarfi, said birth and death statistics were key variables in national policy formulation since they played a critical role in population dynamics.
He, therefore, called on the government to support the new technology to build a robust registration mechanism.
Commitment
In a speech read on his behalf, the Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Mr Collins Dauda, said the government was committed to ensuring that the country had an efficient vital registration system.
“Comprehensive birth registration system is the gateway for children to access education, healthcare and for development planning,” he said.
The minister indicated that the increase in mobile phone penetration in the country would facilitate the effective implementation of the project nationwide.
Representatives of UNICEF, Ms Rushnan Murtaza, and the Chief Executive Officer of Tigo Ghana, Ms Roshi Motman, joined the registrar of the BDR to sign the partnership agreement.
They both declared their support for the initiative and commitment to work towards the successful implementation of the project.