Staff Correspondent

Due to the absence of mayor and councilors in the country’s current situation, the regular activities of Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC) are being severely disrupted. It should be noted that the birth registration process of children under DSCC has been closed for quite some time.

Children are facing numerous problems for difficulty in their birth registration process under the DSCC.
DSCC started working by creating its own server last year when there was suffering due to slowness in the birth and death registration system. This brought initially relief to the residents under the DSCC area. Because, they were able to register the birth very easily. But there have been legal and other complications in this regard.

Government institutions do not have any Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the DSCC for inter-communication in verification of birth and death registration data.

In this situation, complications have arisen in getting the services of various government institutions. Birth certificate is required to take various services including various fields of education, driving license and national identity card.

DSCC will have to sign MoUs with a total of 22 government institutions starting from the Registrar General’s office to make these services available to the children.

Apart from this, the existing laws and regulations of birth and death registration should also be amended. Taking these steps will require the approval of the local government department.

Residents under the DSCC can apply to own server of DSCC for birth and death registration. But the activities of birth and death registration are centrally conducted by server controlled by Registrar General’s Office. DSCC’s own server is not interconnected with the server under the control of Registrar General’s office.

As a result, information of persons registered under DSCC’s own server is not being centrally stored. And due to this, there is a lot of complications in using the birth certificate obtained from the City Corporation.

Due to all these complications, child-rights organizations like INCIDIN Bangladesh raised their concern as they are not being able to provide children with necessary services such as institutional education, technical education process, reintegration process, shelter home, employment etc. due to lack of their birth certificate.

The organization continues discussion with the City Corporation officials to solve this issue at shortest possible time.

It is known that the problem over the birth certificate of DSCC has been prevailing for the last 10 months. It could not be known when it will end.

Necessary steps should be in place to solve this problem at earliest possible time.