There is no backlog of applications for birth certificates at the General Register Office (GRO), the Registrar General, Greta McDonald has said.
For January, 25300 birth certificates, 3450 marriage certificates and 2300 death certificates including those processed from a total of 7689 applications for birth certificates, 590 for deaths and 1042 for marriage during the month, were issued, she said in an interview with state TV, the Government Information Agency (GINA) reported.
The issue of birth certificates has come under the spotlight recently with concerns expressed by some political parties about persons not being registered to vote because they lacked birth certificates. Last week, President Bharrat Jagdeo promised to investigate concerns raised by the PNCR about the difficulties some persons experience in being registered, due to the inability of the GRO to deliver birth and marriage certificates in a timely manner.
And earlier this month, in response to concerns raised by Alliance For Change (AFC) National Executive, Mark Atkinson, about persons not being registered, Public Relations Officer of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), Vishnu Persaud said that GECOM is aware that there are thousands of young people who would be of voting age, with respect to the upcoming elections, who could not apply for registration because they were/are not in possession of birth certificates, since their births were never registered. Despite raising the matter at several levels including the Minister of Home Affairs and the General Registrar, their representations have not borne the desired fruits, he had said.
The PNCR during a press briefing last Thursday, said it had written to GECOM urging the body “to exercise its authority by insisting that the obstacles to registration are removed speedily to facilitate the registration of voters during the claims and objections period.”
When questioned about the issue on Friday during a press briefing at State House, Jagdeo said that if true, it is a legitimate concern. “If people are not registered because of some fault of some government agency or GECOM, that’s a legitimate concern and I will look into it and address it,” Jagdeo had said. “I will have concerns about that too, not just the opposition if that were the case,” he said. “I’ll have to examine that and whatever it takes to remedy that situation, we should all work urgently to get that done within the constitutional time frame,” he continued.
Yesterday, GINA reported McDonald as saying that there is no backlog of applications at the GRO as the staff continues to work tirelessly to ensure that applications are processed and certificates delivered in a timely manner. During February 1 to 14, the GRO received applications for birth, marriage and death certificates to the amount of 4022, 517 and 327 respectively, she said.
According to McDonald, the GRO has also been making significant strides in ensuring that residents in Amerindian communities are able to register births and apply for certificates. Since 2002 the GRO initiated a project called ‘Registration of births for Amerindians’ where officers visited several communities to find out why persons in those communities were not issued with birth certificates.
“We did a lot of work but we did not get to go to all of the villages because of the layout. We worked on it in 2003 to 2006,” the Registrar General was quoted as saying.
The GINA report said that in 2006, with the involvement of the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs, thousands of affidavits were delivered to the GRO for the registration of births for persons to enable them to register for National Identification Cards (ID) cards.
GINA reported McDonald as saying that during this time, the GRO received about 5000 applications on a weekly basis. She hoped that that project would have been completed by now but it continues as affidavits are still being received from the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs. The GRO is also assisted by the Ministry of Health and the Catholic and Anglican churches in this project, GINA said.
McDonald was reported as saying that most of the applications for birth certificates that are coming out of these communities now are for children as those for adults have already been completed. The Registrar General said that the GRO is therefore not responsible for persons who have not been issued birth certificates since the project started since 2002. She stated that the project was not initiated for elections but it was based on the GRO’s view that everyone is entitled to a birth certificate.
GINA reported that the processing of certificates takes about four weeks to be completed and each application is marked by the date it is received and dispatched by the GRO.
McDonald said that after the four-week processing period if the applicant does not receive it he/she can go into the GRO with proof of application and they will be facilitated there. There are currently 15 writers in the GRO and each writes about 100 certificates on a daily basis. As soon as an application is received by the GRO processing begins, according to GINA.
Last Thursday, the PNCR had said that a team led by its General Secretary Oscar Clarke met the chairman and commissioners of GECOM to discuss matters of concern, following the conclusion of the continuous registration process. During this meeting, issues of mutual interest were discussed, including “the difficulty faced by some eligible persons in being registered because of their inability to obtain, in a timely manner, the relevant source documents such as birth and marriage certificates from the General Registrar’s Office.”
The PNCR had said it appreciated the concerns expressed by the chairman and other members of GECOM on this matter and “the efforts reportedly made so far to encourage the administration to implement procedures to remove this difficulty.
“GECOM, however, cannot abdicate its overall responsibility for the conduct of free, fair and transparent elections,” the party added. “The inability of eligible persons to register affects their constitutional right to participate in the decision-making process of the state and cannot be dismissed as trivial.” According to the party, both the government and GECOM “have a duty to ensure that all steps are taken to have all eligible Guyanese registered” and thereby allow them to vote at elections.
Earlier this month, Atkinson said in a letter to this newspaper that after doing a fan-out exercise on behalf of the party, he found that many young people who ought to be voting for the first time are not registered. He said that this information was brought to the attention of the GECOM regional representative, but there was very little progress.
In response, Persaud, said that the assertions of Atkinson have been found to be “grossly erroneous and can only be seen as an attempt to cast doubts on the work of the Guyana Elections Commission in respect to preparations for General and Regional Elections 2011”.
But, he noted that GECOM is aware that there are thousands of young people who would be of voting age, with respect to the upcoming elections, who could not apply for registration because they were/are not in possession of birth certificates, since their births were never registered.
“In fact, we had determined during the conduct of the 2008 house-to-house registration exercise that the extent of this problem is not restricted to Amerindians only.
Consequently, GECOM raised this matter at several levels not (least) with the Minister of Home Affairs and with the General Registrar. The objective behind this thrust was to bring about a suitable resolution with the result being the registration of the births of the concerned persons so that they could be issued birth certificates to be used to apply for registration. To date, our representations have not borne the desired fruits”, he had said.
