Anomalies, sufferings galore in birth registration service!

Abdul Mukith, a resident of Merul Badda in Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC), wants to admit her daughter into a school. He has to submit to the school the birth registration certificate of her daughter along with the admission form.

On 3 November, he submitted an online application for the certificate. Two days later, he went to the zone-10 office in Satarkul under Badda police station.

“When I presented my papers to the assistant registrar of the office, he told me to go to the registrar. After going through the documents, he asked me whether I owned any property in Dhaka. As I replied no, he wrote down on my application form ‘no permanent address, cancelled’,” Mukith said.

“There are two options for submitting an application on the registrar general website – from permanent address and birthplace. My daughter is a resident of the area by birth. She has a vaccination card which is proof of her age and residency. However, my application was cancelled for not being a permanent resident, which is nothing but harassment. Other local government offices issue certificates to residents by birth,” he added.

Two birth registrars of DNCC confirmed to the correspondent that they were giving certificates to residents by birth accepting vaccination cards as proof of age and residency.

DNCC Assistant Health Officer and Birth Registrar of Zone-10 Dr Anik Roy said they were not giving certificates to anyone who is not a permanent resident.

However after he was reminded of the relevant section of the Births and Deaths Registration Act, 2004, he agreed to accept the application with a condition that the applicant must provide a certificate by a registered physician to certify her age.

Mukith said, “The last date of application for admission of my daughter was 14 November. Had the officials told me first about the requirements, I would have collected it. I contacted my family members at my permanent address in Sylhet’s Moulvibazar. The officials concerned in the area said many applicants have been pending for there to months as the server is down. There is no possibility of getting the certificate soon.”

Like Mukith, many others have been harassed by the service providers due to the anomalies in the laws.

Service seekers who need the certificate for different emergency causes like school admission, purchasing land, opening bank accounts, and passport and visa processing, said, officials ask them for hospital certificates for age verification of the applicants who were not born in a hospital. For age and residency verification of an adolescent, they demand an age verification certificate.

Officials of DNCC’s health department, who deal with the birth certificate issues, said most of the time, the server of birth and death registrations, remains out of order.

On 12 November, hardware trader Afzal Hossain went to the office of DNCC Ward-17 councillor to collect a birth certificate for his son.

He said, “My son, an 8th-grader of Kuril Kuratoli Govt High School, needs a birth certificate for his exam. On 1 November, I was told that the birth certificate of me and my wife are required for applying for my son’s certificate. We went to a shop to print our certificates but those were not available on the website. We had to apply afresh for the certificates.”

He said, “The process for birth certificates is disturbing and causes immense suffering for us.”

Nurul Islam, an assistant birth registrar of DNCC ward-17, said, “Most of the time, the server of birth registration remains out of service and we cannot serve people timely. People face troubles in filing applications while we cannot print their certificates.”

Pointing his finger to a pile of application files, he said, “A huge number of applications are piled up there, we cannot dispose of them because of the server problem. Normally, we can print up to 30 certificates but on Thursday, we could print only nine. We have to work in the early morning and at night to print the certificates.”

Tofajjal Hossain, an assistant birth registrar of ward-18 of DNCC, said, “Many voters, who were born in this ward and have been living here for 40-50 years, come to us for a birth certificate but we cannot provide it because they have no vaccination card. When they go to their ancestral home, they are also refused there as they are not the voters of the area. What can we do for them?”

Regarding the anomalies, Registrar General of Birth and Death Registration Md Rashidul Hassan said, “The service is provided from 5,500 offices. User ID and password have been provided to 13,000 officials and staff. Apart from that, there are many people involved in the process. The people, who are providing the services, have different interpretations of the laws. Besides, some vested quarters may have a self interest.”

It was impossible to manage the huge population involved in the process despite having laws and a clear direction of Dos and don’ts, he added.

“A child does not necessarily have to have a permanent resident of a particular area. If he/she was born in the area and has a vaccination card, he/she is entitled to the certificate. But there is provision of a variation of age by a physician in case of a child more than six years old but a registrar may be flexible in this regard,” he said further.