HARARE, July 9 (NewsDay Live) -The Binga community under Chief Sinamusanga has expressed gratitude to the Civil Registry department for bringing mobile registration to one of the country's remote areas.
The programme is being spearheaded by the Civil Registry with support from UNICEF and the Swedish embassy.
In an interview with the NewDay during the ID, birth certificate, and death certificate registration blitz at Sinamusanga Primary School on Tuesday, ward 1 councillor Minister Mumpande said the registration blitz had brought a lot of relief to his subjects who used to travel long distances to acquire these documents.
“I am very grateful for this registration blitz that has been brought here to my ward by the second republic, the community had for long been facing transport challenges as they had to travel 160kms to reach to registration centres to access these important documents ,” he said.
“The big challenge that we had is that this area where we live is very prone to human-wildlife conflicts.
In most cases, people fail to acquire these documents because they will be afraid of being attacked by wild animals while travelling on foot to the registration centres.“The other reasons are the bad roads which make movement complicated, thus people end up foregoing these crucial documents,” he said.
Deputy registrar-general responsible for provincial operations Christine Chikerema, said the Civil Registry is targeting to decentralize its services and bring them closer to the people.“This additional support is what is enabling us, for example, to roll out this targeted mobile outreach,” Chikerema said.
“Because like I said, we already do the national mobile registration which the government bankrolls.
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“But this partnership enables the department to reach the very hard-to-reach areas.”
“The partnership with development partners like Unicef, the Swedish embassy, is very key because it enables us to achieve the vision 2030 goal of provision of legal identity for all by 2030, I'm sure you've seen so many smiles today.”Unicef Zimbabwe child protection manager Nyasha Mayanga said Unicef is supporting the government of Zimbabwe in terms of strengthening the civil registration and vital statistics system in the country.“The system is a core foundation of protecting the rights and welfare of our children in this country,” Mayanga said.
“Let’s appreciate that securing a birth certificate for the birth registration process is not merely an administrative process or a bureaucratic process, but is a gateway to accessing essential services, to protecting the children and to ensuring their right to identity and nationality is fulfilled.”
