Birth registration facilities

FE Team | Published: July 04, 2007 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00

IT is surprising that the government introduced a provision to show birth registration for enjoying a number of citizen rights a few year back. Despite this, the process of birth registration is found very slow because many people are not aware of those facilities. It has been learnt that the nationals who have their birth registered can get passports, government jobs, licenses for driving and other activities easily.
It seems that enough measures have not been taken to disseminate the information regarding the birth registration arrangement and the benefits that accrue from it. And for that reason, about 93 to 90 per cent of the total population did not have their birth registered. Barely seven to 10 per cent people have done it. It has also been found that those who get interested in or need to do the registration face troubles and complications in having it done. All these indicate that the government would face formidable challenges in the coming days to bring cent per cent births under registration, which is necessary for many reasons and various purposes.
Almost all people understand that birth registration certificate is important for resisting early marriages, trafficking of young women and children and engagement of children as labour. Birth registration would help in formulating policies at regional and national level on education and training, conducting survey on level of unemployment and underemployment, controlling crimes and bringing back the irregular child and other migrants from abroad.
So our request to the government is to simplify the birth registration process for encouraging people in this regard. There is shortage of manpower too to make good the lapses now being detected by the authorities concerned. We expect that when the government is going to observe the birth registration day, it will carry forward a workable plan for overcoming our previous failures.
Rashed Ahmed
Baily road, Dhaka