Over 450 children in Livingstone have received birth certificates through the help of Save the Children Norway, Department of Registration and Ministry of Education.
And Southern Province Minister Elijah Muchima has said children need to have birth certificates which are a legal identification and a proof of their existence.
The children who received the birth certificates are from Ngwenya, Mahululu, Simonga, Twabuka ,and Chaaba areas of the district.
Mr. Muchima said government will continue educating the nation on the need to protect and respect the rights of children as provided for in the Zambian constitution.
He said it was unfortunate that many children were not registered at birth and as such forfeited their rights to protection which government was obliged to provide because there was no official record to confirm their existence.
Mr. Muchima said this in Livingstone yesterday in a speech read for him by Acting Livingstone District Commissioner Godwin Sanjase at the handover of the birth certificates to registered children in Livingstone.
He said in the absence of children’s birth data, government found it difficult to plan and monitor national policies and programs for children.
Mr. Muchima said birth registration had a number of benefits and played a key role in the prevention of child trafficking.
He, however, acknowledged that parents faced challenges such as lack of medical centres in rural areas, in their quest to register their children’s births.
But Mr. Muchima was quick to add that government would turn its birth registration policy into reality by decentralizing the issuing of certificates to provincial and district levels.
He called on more stakeholders to come on board to provide financial and technical support focusing on birth registration in the province.
Meanwhile, Provincial Child Development Coordinator, Ernest Chilufya said government’s commitment to children’s development issues was evident in its policies.
Mr. Chilufya noted that registration was an advocacy issue that had been made possible by support from line ministries such as education and department of registration in partnership with Save the Children Norway.
[ ZANIS ]
Good news for our future leaders. Thumps up ba GRZ
“He said in the absence of children’s birth data, government found it difficult to plan and monitor national policies and programs for children”
GRZ is to blame. There is no policy for proper keeping of records by the government whatsoever!
your child is born at hospital, you take birth record to BOMA and get forms which you fill in and then take to council for them to sign, from there you go back to BOMA and leave the forms and collect birth certificate after 1 month.
that is one of the reasons a lot of children will be without birth certificates.
even the fact that an ngo has to come in to help people get something as basic as birth certificates is so so sad
This goes to confirm how backward Zambia is, all because of poor governance.
But kweena zoona, even just getting abirth certificate is an issue in zed, nangu ni underdevelopment iyaayi ta.
this is a really sad story….we can’t put in place simple registration procedures at all? how is a poor villager supposed to go back to town after x amount of weeks? why not have a birth notification from the hospital…then straight to a dedicated registrar of births and deaths so that you receive the certificate then and there? the registrar can then forward the details to the relevant agency…simple, easy, chapwa!
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