Outcry over issuance of birth certificates in Garissa

Garissa,

Friday, September 8, 2023

KNA by Jacob Songok

Lack of Civil Registration offices in sub-countries within Garissa County has contributed to the low acquisition of new birth certificates for local children.

Garissa has seven sub counties but the Civil Registration Department has only one office based in Garissa town.

  Khasida Abdullahi from Haki na Sheria who has been advocating for the opening of offices across in all sub-counties decried that parents have for a long time been forced to seek important services in Garissa town in their hundreds from their respective sub-counties. 

Khasida was speaking in Kamuthe sub-location in Nanigi ward today during the distribution of 320 birth certificates to children in the area, an exercise in which the NGO played a crucial role in ensuring its success.

“As an organization, we are working very hard to facilitate registration services to the sub-counties. Things could have been much easier if these offices were in each sub-county,” Khasida said.

 She said among the challenges locals are faced with when seeking the services was the high transportation cost to Garissa town and the extra expenses of spending nights looking for birth certificates.

She further said that the other challenge has been that some residents still don’t see the importance of the document saying that the organization has been conducting a door-to-door campaign using their paralegal team in a bid to educate the residents on the importance of the document.

Kamuthe Primary School head teacher Abdinasir Hussein Keynan said that the biggest challenge the school faces is children without birth certificates.

 He said that it has reduced the amount of the capitation fee which the school gets owing to the small number of children who have been captured by the National Education Management Information System (NEMIS).

 “Unfortunately we have a good number of our children who still lack this important document. I only have 150 of them captured in the NEMIS. Thankfully, with the help of Haki na Sheria, we will have some more captured. I want to thank the organizers even as I challenge all stakeholders to up their game in ensuring that all children not only in my school but across the region get the certificate without much difficulties,” he said.

Bura East Sub-County Deputy County Commissioner Thomas Bett used the opportunity to warn parents who kept school-going children at home despite getting the birth certificate saying that the government would act tough on them.

  “I am instructing the chiefs and their assistants with the help of nyumba kumi elders to move around and ensure that no child of school-going age remains at home. We want to ensure that we get the 100 percent transition,” he said.

He thanked the NGO for coming to the aid of parents saying that the arrangement has since weeded out brokers and cartels who used to con desperate and unsuspecting parents who were busy looking for the document for their children under the guise that they would help fast-track their acquisition.

Hussein Ali, a parent, while thanking the organization, wondered why the government was dragging its feet in building a Civil Registration office in Bura East and posting staff saying that this would go a long way in helping parents.

Courtesy; KNA