Daily Times

KARACHI: A new innovative project to boost birth registration rates by using mobile phone has been launched on Wednesday.

The project is jointly implemented in district Sujawal by local government and HTP Department, Health Department and Schools Education Department, Sindh government with the support from Plan International Pakistan. The Research and Development Foundation (RDF) is also part of the project.

Digital birth registration project aims to strengthen civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) system by introducing digital birth registration solution which is expected to increase birth registration rates to up to 80 percent in the district by the end of year 2018. Once achieved nationally, the vital population data would be gathered in real time and could replace a costly and periodic census.

The key feature of this project is the use of mobile phones by lady health workers to capture details of all new births at doorstep while parents are no longer required to visit government offices except to collect birth registration certificate.

The registration data, after validation will be stored at a central location, eventually transforming it into a robust digital civil registration database.

Speaking at the ceremony, Jam Khan Shoro, minister for local government and HTP Department, said “The government is committed to ensure accessibility of birth registration services to everyone. The new digital birth registration system will remove the barriers in existing system and strengthen civil registration database with live feeds of authentic birth registration records. This will provide government with key statistics for important policy decisions.” Imran Yusuf Shami, acting country Director, Plan International Pakistan said, “Digital birth registration is a milestone that ensures child’s right to education, health and protection from violence, early marriage and child labour.” Safdar Raza, country advocacy manager, Plan International said that they have been involved in birth registration since 1997.

Earlier, Zahid Jalbani, project manager, Plan International, briefed participants about the project and shared that Sindh is among the least performing regions in terms of birth registration where only 3 in 10 children (29%) are registered according to multi-indicator cluster survey (MICS) 2013-14. These figures are more alarming in the case of District Sujawal where only 3.4% children are registered, he added.