The Minister for Local Government, Decentralisation and Rural Development, Hon. Daniel Botwe has presented two thousand, four hundred and fifty (2,450) mobile tablets and eight vehicles to the Births and Deaths Registry to facilitate and improve upon the registration of births and deaths across the country.

The mobile tablets and vehicles were from the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), through the efforts of the Office of the Vice President, Dr. Mahmudu Bawumia, under the Harmonizing and Improving Statistics in West Africa Project (HISWAP) funded by the World Bank, a  project to strengthen the statistical systems in the West African sub-region.

Launching the Mobile Mass Registration campaign, Hon. Daniel Botwe was hopeful that the logistics to the Registry would help improve statistics in both births and deaths fields.

He noted that in 2021, the Registry recorded 80% births and only 17% deaths, outlining that the registration of the later is the greatest constraints in the record system due to the low importance attached to it.

He emphasised that Section 32 (4) of the Registration of the Births and Deaths Act 2020 (1027 ) required that a person who conducts burial shall inspect the death certificate and burial permit before proceeding with the burial, which mandates everyone to comply.

He therefore entreated the media which he described as key stakeholders in publicizing the activities of the Registry in the mobile mass campaign especially at the sub-district level to partner with the Registry to educate and sensitise the public on the issuance of certificates, the verification of registration of births and deaths, search of records of births and deaths as well as the issuance of burial permit.

  Source: MLGDRD Public Relations Unit

The Births and Deaths Registry (BDR) has initiated a Mobile Mass Registration (MMR) Exercise in Accra as part of the process to attain universal vital registration to aid government plan and develop socio-economic programmes with the use of a reliable and credible data.

Also, steps are being taken to integrate the registration system with related government agencies such as the National Identification Authority (NIA) and National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) to improve upon administrative data gathering to ensured that every child born in the country is registered and given an identification number.

This is in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of a Child, which gives every child the right to be legally registered and legitimately documented by government in consistent with the Sustainable Development Goal Nine (9).  This makes any child who is unregistered to stand the risk of being unable to access social intervention programmes.

These were contained in a speech delivered by the Honourable Minister for Local Government, Decentralisation and Rural Development, Mr. Daniel Botwe at the launch of the Mobile Mass Registration (MMR) Exercise.

This exercise contributes to the attainment of universal vital registration in Ghana. Through public education and sensitization on the need and importance of Civil Registration and Vital Statistics.

Public awareness understanding of births and deaths registrations is essential to government’s planning and development of socio-economic programmes.

The occasion was used to distribute two thousand, four hundred and fifty (2,450) mobile tablets and eighty (8) vehicles to the BDR regional offices across the country.

Source: MLGDRD Public Relations Unit

 Hon Dan Botwe, the Minister for Local Government, Decentralization and Rural Development (MLGDRD), has underscored the need for policies to be informed by data by all Ministries, Department, and Agencies (MDAs)as well as the private sector.

This he said is necessary because development primarily is for the benefit of the population and as such the dynamics of the population at different levels should be the basic considerations in any development planning decision-making.

He, therefore, called on all Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) to make budgetary allocations to build capacities in data management to ensure that policies and programmes implemented are data-driven.

 Adding that, “this is even more critical because the MLGDRD) oversee the work of all the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs), which are the basic units of planning and development in the country. “

The Minister made these remarks at a Policy Dialogue organised by the Regional Institute for Population Studies (RIPS) and partners in Accra; under the theme “Census Data for Policy Decision-Making and Sustainable Development”.

He urged MMDAs to make conscious efforts in searching for, and always using the correct data to inform their medium to long-term development planning activities.

The Dialogue brought together all relevant institutions together to think through how they can together bring this important vision to the front burner of our development planning discourse.

The Minister commended the Government Statistician and the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) and all partners for ensuring the successful conduct of the 2021 Population and Housing Census (PHC) that has once again provided the nation with enormous data to assist with key indicators at the national and sub-national levels in order to measure the progress of all sectors of the Ghanaian economy.

He congratulated RIPS on the Institute’s 50^th Anniversary and the idea to working together with their partners, Ghana Statistics Service (GSS), National Development Populations Commission (NDPC), National Population Council (NPC) and the MLGDRD to organise such an important Policy Dialogue around the need to bring to the fore the importance of data usage in all policy decisions in Ghana. 

Source: MLGDRD Public Relations Unit