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Observer Editorial: Tackle this birth certificate crisis now

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  • Observer Editorial: Tackle this birth certificate crisis now

    <TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=1 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD><SPAN class=TopStory>Tackle this birth certificate crisis now</SPAN>
    <SPAN class=Subheadline></SPAN></TD></TR><TR><TD>
    Friday, August 11, 2006
    </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
    <P class=StoryText align=justify>If we had any lingering doubts about how serious our situation is in regards to birth certificates, then this week's Sunday Observer story should have dispelled them by now.<P class=StoryText align=justify>The report out of the Registrar-General's Department (RGD) is that scores of Jamaicans are unable to claim pensions for which they have worked all their lives in countries like the United Kingdom and the United States, because they have no valid birth certificates.<P class=StoryText align=justify>"It is heart-rending to deal with these cases of individuals who have toiled so hard for so many years in the cold and can't collect their pension now," the chief executive officer of the RGD, Dr Patricia Holness, is quoted by the newspaper as saying.<P class=StoryText align=justify>We were particularly touched by the case of the Jamaican man who is said to be roaming the streets of England, unable to work and can't collect pension because he has no legal proof of his age.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Indeed, as the RGD pointed out, the past has caught up with us. According to Dr Holness, the birth certificate problems mainly affect older Jamaicans born before 1956 and dating as far back as the 1940s.<P class=StoryText align=justify>In those days, many Jamaicans paid scant regard to the need for valid birth certificates. Large numbers of children were born without their births ever being registered. Some were registered, but with errors in the spelling of names that resulted in later problems. Others were registered, but without names.<P class=StoryText align=justify>In at least one ridiculous case, two sisters of different mothers but the same father, were given the same Christian and surnames and so registered.<P class=StoryText align=justify>A significant number of Jamaicans are finding that they can't complete the immigration filing process for themselves or their children, because of problems with the birth certificates.
    Some are having difficulty accessing special aid programmes which require them to give proof of age.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Given the need to be specifically and accurately identified when travelling - in an era of terrorism, real or imagined - there has been an insistence that birth certificates be done on security paper. That has excluded large numbers of people from renewing birth certificates, having acquired them falsely in the first place.<P class=StoryText align=justify>We are only just emerging out of a situation in which the issuing of birth certificates was a free-for-all system largely run by touts at the old Spanish Town office. From a rundown building, under-staffed and with manual storage and retrieval facilities, we are, thankfully, now in an era of modern operations out of the computerised Registrar-General's Department at Twickenham Park.<P class=StoryText align=justify>Dr Holness and her staff are clearly working hard, reporting a 98 per cent response rate in terms of applications satisfied and we congratulate them wholeheartedly, while acknowledging that some people are still having difficulties getting their documents in a timely manner.<P class=StoryText align=justify>But even so, the RGD cannot make blood out of stone and something will have to be done to deal with this painful situation in which so many of our compatriots cannot legally get birth certificates which are needed for a variety of very important reasons.<P class=StoryText align=justify>There is need for creative solutions, and that had better come sooner than later.
    "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
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