The Registration Insolvency and Trusteeship Agency (RITA) have succeeded in the implementation of a new system of registration of births for children aged less than five years.
TheDeputy Minister of Constitution and Legal Affairs, Ms Angellah Kairuki.
The new registration system was launched on July 23, 2013 in Mbeya Region by the Deputy Minister for Constitution and legal affairs, Ms Angella Kairuki, who said that the main goal of changing the system of registration is to eliminate the problems faced by people who do not have birth certificates.
The marketing and communication manager, Mr Josephat Kimaro said during a press conference yesterday that the improvements that have been made in the new system include ward executive offices and medical facilities which provide health care to mothers and children.
“The government has removed birth certificate fees which was 3,500/- for children under five years of age,” he said. He added that the registration procedures have been restructured.
A person who arrives at a registration office is able to register and leave with the birth certificate on the spot unlike earlier procedures where the registration was done in the hospital upon child birth but then have to go to RITA offices in order to get the certificate.
Mr Kimaro said that the first exercise of the registration and issuance of certificates in Ward offices and medical facilities for children aged less than five years is permanent and the first phase of this process involves five regions which are Mbeya, Mwanza, Shinyanga, Simiyu and Geita.
The phase will be completed in July 2015. He added that in the ongoing implementation in Mbeya Region public awareness has been encouraging. More than 61,000 children aged less than five years have been registered and given certificates.
Among them 49 per cent are girls and 51 per cent are boys. “The districts in which the new registration procedure will be implemented are Mbozi, Rungwe, Mbarali and Momba which comes last according to statistics,” he said. Mr Kimaro said that the aim of RITA is to register about 230,000 children in Mbeya Region by June 2014.
By AGNES LUGONGO and JANETH MTUI, Tanzania Daily News
