Accra, Aug. 23, GNA - Registration of births and deaths has reduced considerably with the Births and Deaths Registry recording only 54 percent of births and 23 percent of deaths last year. This compares with 67 percent of registered births and 24 per cent of deaths two years ago, Alhaji Awudu Yeremiah, deputy Minister of Local Government, Rural Development and Environment, said in Accra on Thursday.

"Expectations were that the Registry would make further improvement to hit the projected target of 85 per cent birth registry coverage for 2006," Alhaji Yeremiah, said while launching the Fourth Births and Deaths Registration celebration, which falls on September 1. Alhaji Yeremiah attributed the state of affairs to the lack of adequate registration centres nationwide and the inability of the few centres to procure the needed logistics to enhance monitoring and supervision.

The Ministry, he noted, would therefore explore the possibility of formalizing the Registry and its volunteers by enlisting them through the National Youth Employment Programme while efforts are made to address the challenges.

Alhaji Yeremiah announced that the computerization programme of the Registry was almost completed and hoped that the use of electronically generated certificates with enhanced features would be made possible by end of year.

A database of registered events that would facilitate information sharing between the Registry and other agencies, including Ghana Statistical Service, National Identification Authority and the Social Security and National Insurance Trust would also be made possible, he said.

Alhaji Yeremiah noted that with support from Plan Ghana and UN Fund for Population Activities, Community Population Registers had been introduced in 21 communities in the Central, Eastern and Upper West Regions and were being managed by locally-trained people. This will be replicated in other communities following the successes it has chalked.

He said another worrying phenomenon was the issue of death registration. "Non-registration of death and the indiscriminate internment of human bodies is a practice that should be discouraged and checked with the force of legislation available to us".

He observed that the practice had contributed to loss of information on deaths and this had a telling effect on health and issues affecting the environment.

Alhaji Yeremiah urged the district assemblies to ensure that all burial grounds, whether public or private, were registered and controlled by them.

Registration of births during the first year is free while that of death within seven days of occurrence is also free.

Alhaji Yeremiah called on the media to help educate the public on these civic responsibilities adding that failure on the part of parents to do so led to the child's existence not being officially recognized. Mr Kinsley Asare Addo, Senior Assistant Registrar of Births and Deaths Registry, noted that some of the precautionary measures taken on the issuance of fake certificates was posting staff to the Passport Office to sieve fake certificates from the originals.

Proposals had also been sent to the government to get permanent and befitting offices to help execute their mandate better. The Birth and Deaths Registry Day, instituted fours years ago, is celebrated on September 1 in memory of the first child registered in Ghana on that day in 1912. That child died same day and the name was duly registered as the first in the death registry. This year, the chiefs and people of Kpetoe in the Adaklu Anyigbe District of the Volta Region would hold a national durbar to kick-start the celebration. It would be on the theme: "Universal Births and Deaths Registration - Key to Achieving Ghana's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).