Births & Deaths Registry Goes Digital

The Births and Deaths Registry has digitised about six million out of about 35 million records in a major effort to modernise its operations for better documentation and easy accessibility.

In addition to this, 10 million more have been scanned out of the total number for digitisation.

Minister of State at the Ministry for Local Government, Decentralization, and Rural Development (MLGDRD), Mr. O. B. Amoah, underscored the significance of birth and death certificates as foundational documents for identity management and data collation.

He stated this when he addressed a workshop ahead of a training programme, focused on document fraud held at the Institute of Local Government Studies last Thursday.

Mr. O.B. Amoah expressed optimism that the training programme will empower Births and Deaths Registry staff to identify and verify the validity and authenticity of birth and death certificates.

The programme is scheduled to run from August 2023 to December 2023, with the Ministry committed to sustaining and expanding the gains of such partnerships to strengthen civil registration in Ghana.

“We recognize the crucial role civil registration plays in our country’s development. Births and Deaths Registry, under the Ministry, has been instrumental in overseeing the registration and documentation of vital life events in Ghana,” Mr. O. B. Amoah stated, acknowledging the Registry’s efforts at authenticating the quality and security features of birth and death certificates, especially the certified copies over the years.

The Minister of State who is also the Member of Parliament (MP) for Akuapem South again emphasised the pivotal role of civil registration in national policy drafting and development, providing a framework for documentation and certification of vital events.

This process, he said, safeguards the rights and entitlements of citizens and promotes inclusive policies and effective governance.

He also commended the Ministry’s support in utilising decentralised structures across 261 Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies (MMDAs) to involve the community in the birth and death registration process.

Mr. O. B. Amoah expressed gratitude for the support received from international partners, including the World Bank, Netherlands and Norwegian Embassies, and Canadian High Commission, for enhancing the capacity and efficiency of the Registry.

As part of efforts to equip the Registry, the Netherlands presented 50 document security magnifiers to enhance its work.

Online payment

Introduction of online payment services through the ghana.gov.gh platform has further streamlined processes, and the Registry is poised to launch its official website by the end of August 2023, further enhancing services to the public and stakeholders.

The Acting Registrar of Births and Deaths, Ms. Henrietta Lamptey, stated that her outfit needed the infrastructural, funding, systems, working equipment and capacity-building support to complete the entire process.

She said the registry was on a transformation agenda and, therefore, needed to digitise all services and clear all backlogs with regard to manual records.

“We hold over 30 million manual records dating back to 1912 and some from 1898 on births and deaths registration.

“We’ve been able to digitise six million. We still seek full support to complete the whole task,” Ms Lamptey reiterated.

She called for support from the government, foreign partners and stakeholders to make the registry to successfully achieve its mandate and be competitive globally.

Collaboration

The Netherlands Ambassador to Ghana, Jeroen Verheul, said his country was interested in enhancing the work of the registry to promote legal migration since in modern societies verifying the authentic identity of a person was key.

He stated that identity verification was not only important for government services domestically, but also internationally because the Netherlands needed to be able to rely on the authenticity and value of documents issued by the Ghanaian government to uphold the correct identities of migrants.

The Dutch ambassador said identity chains were vulnerable and needed to be protected as they were under threat all over the world.

“So even in a highly sophisticated administration and economy as the Netherlands, we face the impact of these criminal organisations. So we need to work together,” Mr Verheul stressed.

Background

In the 2022 State of the Nation’s Address, President Akufo-Addo applauded the registry over the moves to digitise its operations to enhance its services.

“Never again will it be that someone, born in this country, will live a full life, die and be buried without any record of his or her existence.

“The operations of the Births and Deaths Registry are finally being digitised to make sure that documents issued from that department are accorded the respect they should have,” he said.