Question NW72 to the Minister of Home Affairs

Reply:

a) The Department initiated a process to address and reduce Late Registration of Birth(LRB) through the following steps:

1. By reviewing the legislation that deals with Late Registration of Birth.
2. This was followed by stringent measures for those who visited the department to apply for this category of birth registration.
3. Hereafter a campaign was launched to further emphasise the importance of birth registration within 30 days. This was ramped up with the deployment of mobile units to far-flung rural areas for birth registrations services.

b) For the Department to completely eradicate LRB’s, an Optimisation rollout strategy was developed to automate the birth registration process in ensuring connectivity and automation at health facilities. The Department has entered into a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Department of Health (DoH) to ensure that each child is allocated with a birth certificate on the spot, by registering birth at health facilities. The objective is to have all health facilities connected to Home Affairs systems in ensuring that all births which occurred at a health facility are registered before discharge and within 30 days as prescribed in the Births and Deaths Registration Act 51, of 1992 (amendment Act, Act 18 of 2010). The DHA will continue to expand access to services at health facilities with maternity wards over the medium term. Concerted efforts will be made to encourage the public to register births and deaths at hospitals in order to release pressure on conventional DHA offices. The plan was developed based on birth occurrences per health facility. The plan in this regard is staggered over a 5-year period and is envisaged to be completed by 2024/25. The early registration of birth will also reduce the need for late registration of birth applications. It is thus expected that this plan will ultimately assist in addressing challenges with birth registrations.

END.