By Akosua Frema Frempong
The Births and Deaths Registry has launched the second phase of its Community Population Register Project in Kumasi.
The implementation of the community population register allows people to record all members of their community on the register, as well as all births and deaths that occur in the community.
The Births and Deaths Registry was established by Act 301 of 1965, within the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, to handle and develop the births and deaths registration system in Ghana.
Its core business is, to provide accurate and reliable information on all births and deaths occurring within Ghana for national socio-economic development through their registration and certification.
The Births and Deaths Registry has begun implementing the Community Population Register. This initiative is required by law as stipulated in the Registration of Births and Deaths Act. The implementation of the community population register gives the people the opportunity to record all members of their community into the register and in doing so, record all birth and death events that occur in the community.
These registers are envisaged to be properties of the community and will only act as documents of reference for the registration of birth and death events by officers of the births and deaths registry. The project is being sponsored by the Harmonizing and Improving Statistics in West Africa, with support from the World Bank and the Ghana Statistical Service.
As an arrangement to build on the achievements made under the Community Population Register Project, the Births and Deaths Registry has launched Phase Two of the Scheme in Kumasi. It is to be implemented in 25 new communities across the Eastern, Ahafo and Bono East Regions.
Three community volunteers have been selected from each of the communities to assist the implementation team at the community level to compile and maintain the Register. They were sensitized to listing and enumeration, interview and data collection, storage and other topics of relevance to their training. The Registrar of Births and Deaths, Madam Henrietta Lamptey, is spearheading the implementation of this initiative.
“Today’s training is not just the beginning or the end. It’s a continuous process, and as we go through the process of registering, equipping volunteers, and equipping those who are interested in partnering up with births and deaths on this initiative, we would know that their scope will be broadened.
Voluntarily, people will come on board to support because as we have volunteers that we have trained, what happens if they also exit the community? What are the structures we put in place? That is why it is key that its situated within the district assemblies, so with them and their presence here today ensures that the strategy for sustainability doesn’t become one day or one year wonder, but it’s part of the planning process. So every member of the Assembly is aware of this process. Key staff who are recruited into this domain are also empowered to continue and the skills go on,” she explained.
“The monitoring aspect is also key. Who monitors and what are some of the innovative way that we could employ when it comes to technology? That involves a lot of resources we talking about digitalizing the process which we have already started initiating by the statistics unit of birth and death registry. We have started developing a template for easy capturing of this.
So it doesn’t become monotonous, or one way that it becomes exciting for those who are leading the process and also for them to share their knowledge and the idea and enhance the capacity of the community”, she noted.
A Senior Statistician at the Ghana Statistical Service, Mr. Victor Owusu Boateng noted that the availability of high-quality statistics is key for successful implementation of poverty-reduction strategies, economic progress, and development outcomes.
“So we are here because of HISWAP, which is being sponsored by World Bank and the Government of Ghana. We are being supervised by ECOWAS and AU Commission. With data under the Agenda 2030 and Agenda 2063 Africa we want, there is a need for us to generate a lot of data to ensure that we can measure these indicators.
When you take the SDG’s which have been common from the district assembly to all MMDA’s and MDA’s, if your budget or your activity doesn’t have anything to do with SDG’s, know that your budget will not be approved. It tells you that we need to be committed to the production of data in this country. So we have seventeen goals under the SDG’s, we have 169 targets and 231 indicators. About 57 of these indicators are from administrative sources” he indicated
“The importance of this Community population Register is dear to the heart of the government statistician because we don’t have to wait for every 10 years to conduct census. So I ask myself the last census was done in 2021 and we are in 2023. What data are we expecting? To use for planning and development. So we need to always project and do estimations of data collected in 2021.So for us to develop based on data or real time data, there is a need to have Community Population Register,” he indicated.
A community volunteer, Jemima Adams from Atiwa District.
“We are going to work in a Abrenya CHPS. It’s a hard to reach area. So we’ll try our possible best to get to all those communities to make sure their names, deaths and births are registered in their CPR Books. We will be walking, especially because our places are hard to reach area so be doing most of the walkings or at times will be using the motorbikes”, she disclosed.
Another volunteer, Edi Yao Dzosi Timothy from the Afram Plains North District.
“For we are volunteers that have been selected by our. Assembly members and then the chiefs that we should come and take this workshop, the training so that we can implement whatever we are taught here in the communities over there. My dedication is needed, I have to set my time and then. Put everything aside and then take this work so seriously as we all thought that we are the Pioneers of this project, we should let the project down. We should take it to the higher high esteem. The community that under me are 12 in number”, he said.
