Easy availability of death certificates

A death certificate is an important document. When a loved one passes away, obtaining this certificate becomes a mandatory task for a number of reasons. These reasons include closing the deceased's bank account, accessing pension benefits, claiming life insurance or settling property. So, getting a registered death certificate should be easy and hassle-free. However, this is not the case for most people.

My mother passed away last November. She used to have a bank account and receive retirement benefits as my father's beneficiary. To close that account, we now need her death certificate. When we went to the local union council to collect the certificate, we were told that it was not possible to obtain my mother's death certificate since she had no birth certificate. Even after informing the union council authorities that we have her National Identity Card, we failed to get her death certificate.

As far as I know, NID database contains one's occupation, permanent address, present address, age, marital status, birth registration number, gender, educational qualification, visible identification mark, religion, driving license number, passport number, income tax certificate number, telephone and mobile phone number, etc. So, why wouldn't a NID card be enough to get a death certificate? Some days ago, while collecting my daughter's birth registration certificate, my wife and I had to collect our birth registration certificates first, although we both had NIDs. During the launch of NID cards, we were told that this card would give us many citizen benefits. But in reality, despite having NID cards, we cannot obtain birth or even death certificates.

Md. Zillur Rahaman,

Satish Sarkar Road,

Gandaria, Dhaka,

zrbbbp@gmail.com