Upper East Regional Registrar of the Birth and Death Department, John Yalmon Badenganoya has bemoaned the low patronage of death certificates in the Upper East Region.
Despite having set a target of issuing 850 death certificates in 2022, the Department has only been able to issue 200 as of September this year.
The Registrar made the comment at a special training held in Bolgatanga to improve their officers’ knowledge of the mobile phone birth registration system.
He indicated that even relatives who usually come to register for their death certificates usually do so to either solve bank or property issues.
He said “… registration of death certificate is free after two weeks. But the patronage of death certification is very low and we are taking steps to talk to our brothers and sisters from the Muslim faith to step up because whenever there is death, they usually bury early.”
“But I must say that people from the Muslim faith do come for their relatives’ death certificates as compared to those from the Christian faith. I’m appealing to people of the region to see death registration as equally important. People sometimes only come to do this registration when they realized that their relatives have a bank or property that needs the certificate.”
Touching on the training, Mr. Yalmon noted that it will help the officers to achieve this year’s targets as well as reduce the backlog.
“Regarding the birth certificates we targeted about 38,591 for the year 2022 and we have been able to register 16,733. But as I speak, the number that has been uploaded is only 8000 plus meanwhile on our manual paper is 16,733. So, with this training, we are poised to upload and fill in the backlogs for users.”
Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1 MHz|Moses Apiah|Ghana
