Electronic birth certificate in seven days
Parents whose children are born at the San Fernando General Hospital would no longer have to worry about receiving their birth certificates several months later or with misspelt names as the Ministry of Legal Affairs yesterday launched its electronic birth registration at the institution yesterday.
Legal Affairs Minister, Prakash Ramadhar, in launching the system, stated that parents in South Trinidad had to often wait one year before they could receive their children’s birth certificates.
He also noted that the registrar of births and deaths offices were comparable to a “treasure hunt” as most people were unaware of their location.
“You know how long it takes to get a birth certificate in San Fernando, one year, that’s how long it takes, we thought that was an injustice, we are about to fix that in San Fernando,” he said.
“When you receive your birth certificate one year after, to your shock and despair the names were spelt wrong and then you have the process now of having that regularised and repaired,” he added.
“We are in a modern world and Trinidad and Tobago has got to come up to speed,” he said, adding what would take one year would now be accomplished within seven working days.
He said death certificates would also be added to the online services on the online registration system.
Ag Registrar General, Karen Bridgewater-Taylor, in her address, said death certificates would be included by the end of the week while the on-line service would be available at all major hospitals at the end of the year.
Meanwhile, Health Minister, Therese Baptiste-Cornelis, confirmed Ramadhar’s observation of misspelt names due to the often-times illegibility of the hand writing at district registration offices saying her middle name of ‘Nadine’ had been changed to ‘Nadina’ by the registration officer who had mis-interperated her father’s ‘e’ as an ‘a’ and only discovered it when she was three years of age.
Excellent Job PPG. PPG working for all.
Yuh see Performance? Dat is Performance!!!