After years and numerous criticisms, the authorities are finally moving to have the records of the General Register Office (GRO) computerised.
In an ad in yesterday’s Sunday Stabroek, the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Services of the Ministry of the Presidency invited expressions of interest for consultancy services for computerisation of the GRO records. According to the ad, the objective of the project is to ensure that all records for the period 1869 to 2015 are correctly input into the CERS to allow for the complete automation of the process for the generation of certificates, verification, easy retrieval and storage.
It said that interested consultants/firms can get further information from or submit expressions of interest to the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of the Presidency.
Over the years, numerous persons have complained about the slow delivery of services by the GRO. Most glaringly, the issue was highlighted last year as officials raised concerns about dead persons being on the voters list.
At the time, Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission (Gecom) Dr Steve Surujbally had said that having dead persons still on the Preliminary List of Electors (PLE) was due to negligence by the GRO. He had stated that the information disseminated by the GRO needed to be at a certain standard prior to a registrant being removed from the National Register of Registrants and the PLE.
“I cannot review the Ministry of Home Affairs’ policy. General Register Office comes under that ministry—a ministry or department that, to this day, is not, is not computerised! Can you believe that? But be that as it may, there is efficiency. I am not saying that they are inefficient, there are laws that we have to go by… it should be not incumbent but it should be in our interest to try and tell them `look, send the damn list’”, Surujbally told a press conference.
In June this year, the Rev Gideon Cecil had complained about the slowness of the process in a letter to Stabroek News. He had related that he applied several times on behalf of poor residents in his community and also for members of his church for birth, death and marriage certificates, but the wait is very long. He said that he applied for some birth, death and marriage certificates last year in the post, but only received a few of those.
“If a person has never been registered, the Registrar at the General Register Office (GRO) should send me a card saying that the person’s record cannot be found. However, I received no such card after sending in the applications. In an age where modern technology is on the increase, I don’t think one should wait more than one week or three days to get a birth certificate from GRO,” he lamented.
He said that as a result of the slow processing of birth certificates, perhaps thousands of Guyanese have been unable to register for their new identification cards and thought they could not vote at the recent elections.
“Why is it that birth, death and marriage certificates are taking months and even years to be processed at the GRO? It seems as if there is a lot of incompetence at that institution. In addition to the people who have been waiting for their birth certificates for over a year, I know of many who had old birth certificates and who are now told that they were never registered. A late birth registration now takes 6 months and tons of paper work and documentation that costs a lot. The cost for one birth certificate just a year ago was just $30 and now it’s $300, an increase of 100%, yet the process takes longer,” he had said.
