Nairobi News

A new automated system of issuing birth certificates is set to expose thousands of fake seekers of the documents who engage in double registration and illegal change of personal details.

Director of Civil Registration Services Department Janet Mucheru said about 2,000 applicants who have sought the documents in the last month were either doing so for a second time or were seeking name changes without approval of their partners and related individuals.

“We are seeing a situation where, for example, mothers are seeking to apply for new birth certificates to exclude the names of children’s fathers without their consent and vice versa,” she told the Sunday Nation.

The revelations come just two weeks since the government moved to streamline the processing of issuing birth certificates in the face of a school crisis as millions of pupils seek the key documents to qualify for the digital registration – National Education Management Information System (Nemis)
automated system.

SERIAL NUMBER

The Civil Registration Services Department rolled out an automated system that allows birth certificate applicants to receive the documents within 30 minutes upon application.

The system, Civil Registration and Vital Statistics System (CRVS), has already been piloted in Nairobi and will spread to counties starting next week, according to Ms Mucheru.

For school children, the department under the Ministry of Interior and Coordination of National Government also started releasing serial numbers to schools to facilitate registration of learners as the key documents are released.

Ms Mucheru said the CRVS system is able to detect double registration and flag them off to the government.

“It is also able to help us to account for revenue collected per office where the registration is taking place,” she said.

Besides, the system has a feature which is able to show the audit trail of whoever makes changes to anyone’s records.