KATHMANDU, MARCH 15
Director of Department of National Identity Card and Vital Registration Binita Bhattarai said that the people facing problems in securing vital registration should first approach her department rather than seeking legal remedies.
Addressing an interaction organised by Forum for Women, Law and Development here today on 'Birth registration: laws and practice,' Bhattarai said that often, people whose applications were rejected by the local levels, resort to legal remedies which was a time-consuming process. She said her department would help resolve the problems. She also said that many local representatives and employees of local governments were not aware of birth registration laws and the legal processes and that's why they were refusing to issue birth registration certificates to many applicants. She said local representatives and government employees needed to know that three laws - Children Act, Muluki Civil Code and National Identity Card and Vital Registration Act governed the process of vital registration. Sometimes the applicant's failure to give accurate details also lead to refusal of their applications, she argued.
Bhattarai said that people could seek birth registration certificate from the place they were born. Stating that people often did not seek their birth registration certificate within 35 days as stipulated in the relevant laws, Bhattarai said that her department was soon launching a programme whereby birth of those children born in hospitals would be automatically registered in the relevant government bodies.
Representative of Sathsath organisation Kabita Shah said large number of street children were unable to receive their birth registration certificates.
Out of 517 street children who sought Sathsath's help, only 138 succeeded in obtaining birth registration certificates. She said 85 street children did not have any document to prove the place of their birth. Parents of 57 children cannot be traced.
Shah said her representatives had to visit the relevant bodies for seven long months to obtain one applicant's birth registration certificate.
Executive Director of FWLD Sabin Shrestha said despite constitutional guarantee of children' rights, many children were unable to secure their birth registration certificate due to the concerned department's apathy and discriminatory behaviour. She said the relevant Act stipulated that a person could seek birth registration certificate either on the basis of mother or father's Nepali nationality. Often, they were asked to produce father's citizenship certificate. Shrestha said in the case of those children whose father and mother could not be traced, the ward office where those children were found should issue birth registration certificates.
A version of this article appears in the print on March 16, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.
