Both registration and issuance of birth and death certificates across the country have remained suspended for the last 17 days mainly due to the collapse of the central server for the Birth and Death Registration Project under Local Government Division causing immense sufferings to citizens.
The continuous and rigorous effort of the authority has failed to restore the system, for which inadequate and unskilled manpower to maintain the system and absence of back-up support have been blamed.
Service seekers like parents of children seeking admission to different schools, applicants for passport, migrant workers, overseas job seekers and students willing to get admission to overseas educational institutions are among the worst sufferers of the present crisis that ensued on February 3.
However, a section of officials at the city corporations assumed 'sabotage' in the incident calling it a 'national catastrophe' which is quite unusual and unexpected as the authority has so far failed to help the service seekers provide any alternative solution to the problem which might have a serious impact on their lives.
Ten zonal offices of the two city corporations of Dhaka have been facing immense pressure from the service seekers as it is the peak time for school admission and the online registration process of the overseas job seekers.
City corporation sources said on an average they issue 10 to 50 certificates daily during the normal time and on special occasions like school admission, national and voter ID preparation and for going abroad for job and education, they issue even 100 certificates a day. The charge for a birth certificate fixed by the government is Tk 10 for each year while that of the first two years is free of cost.
During a visit to Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC) on Wednesday, this correspondent found that people were coming for birth certificates for various purposes but were being refused with request to wait until the system functions as usual.
DSCC chief health officer Brig Gen Md Mahbubur Rahman told the FE that the server had remained dysfunctional for over 15 days and the city corporation was only the user of the system.
People have been suffering immensely and they might have been facing serious problems in their life due to the problem, especially the poor overseas job seekers, he said.
"We have been issuing copy to copy certificates on an emergency basis but cannot register those online for integration with the national database. We have issued 49 certificates so far," said Mr Rahman, adding: "we have been repeatedly telling the project director about the problem and he is also giving assurance of the solution without any visible result."
DSCC has made a revenue loss of about Tk 1.0 million over the last 16 days from birth and death certificate issuance. The corporation earned some Tk 4.266 million from October to December 2014 from issuance of such certificates.
Started in 2007, the Birth and Death Registration Project was approved in 2008 with the duration until December 2011 and financial assistance from GoB and UNICEF. UNICEF outsourced the India-based Paskan to supply the software and Bangladeshi Tech Valley Solutions for hardware.
The strength of the server was one terabyte which can preserve 250 million data entries. But the server had only 130 million data entries and log data occupied the rest space, project director of Birth and Death Registration Project AKM Saif ul Islam Chowdhury told the FE.
"The process of cleaning up the log data is going on after which the capacity and speed of the server will be enhanced," he said, adding: "the validity of the server expired at 3:22 am of February 9."
"If 29991 users strike the system at a time, it cannot bear the load," said Mr Islam.
He said there are only two assistant programmers who look after this huge system for which they are not the right manpower. Despite his repeated requests to appoint a system analyst and data administrator, the ministry has not paid heed to his requests.
"If the ministry could understand the importance of the project and solved the small problems, this kind of disaster would not have happened," he said.
The project director, however, assured of restoring the system by Wednesday night as he was informed by various parties working to solve the problem. He said birth registration project, UNICEF, Tech Valley, Doha Tech, Bangladesh Computer Council (BCS), and a representative of Microsoft have been working on the issue.
Mr Islam also said a new server of BCS will be integrated with the present server to enhance the capacity and speed.
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No issuance of birth, death certificates for 17 days
Kamrun Nahar | Published: February 20, 2015 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00
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