New and easy birth register

Government has introduced an e-birth notification system in a bid to address the high prevalence of late birth registrations in the country. This was announced by the home affairs minister Pendukeni Ivula-ithana during a general staff meeting last week. According to her every birth that takes place in the country's hospitals will electronically notify the ministry's National Population Registration. “The system will support efforts to reduce the late registration of births as the collected data can be used to pinpoint population groups or areas where late registration is common,” she said. The project is inter-ministerial between the Office of the Prime Minister, the home affairs, health and information ministries, the police and the statistics agency. The testing of the system will start this month and will be officially launched in mid-March. This comes at a critical time when a number of rural children are often denied access to schools because they lack birth certificates, while many elderly are denied access to a monthly pension because of a lack of official documents. She also pointed out that the ministry has resolved to identify vulnerable groups in the country who are not yet on the existing government social protection programmes.To this end, the ministry has conducted mobile registrations in the Kavango West, Kavango East, Oshikoto, Ohangwena and Erongo regions which saw 1 038 people registered for identification documents (IDs) and 1 220 people registered for birth. During this exercise the ministry also successfully granted citizenship, birth certificates and ID cards to over 200 so-called struggle kids.“Due to financial constraints we are unable to conduct countrywide mobile registrations. I therefore use this opportunity to call upon the public to seek out the service at the nearest office of the ministry,” she urged.Meanwhile the minister said there is a rise in identity theft in the country by illegal immigrants who have stolen identity documents and birth certificates of locals. “I must continue to inform the public to keep their national documents safe at all times. Nonetheless, the ministry continues to tighten up its processes in order to detect any dubious applications. All processes are now digitised and application forms and records can easily be traced and the involved parties detected,” she warned. JEMIMA BEUKES

New and easy birth register

Comments

Namibian Sun 2025-07-04

Please login to leave a comment

New and easy birth register

Comments

Namibian Sun 2025-07-04

Please login to leave a comment

Login