Birth Registration Still a Challenge in Tanzania
BIRTH Registration of children under 5 years in Tanzania and Africa at large is still a challenge despite the efforts of the government and other partners both local and international jointly aimed at improving the service in the country.
The 2014 statistics released by UNICEF child protection in Tanzania shows that only 3% of rural children and 22% of urban children under the age of 5 have their birth certificates in the country, this illustrates how many children in the country lack these important birth certificates.
2014 STATISTICS OF BIRTH REGISTRATION IN RURAL AND URBAN AREAS
According to Registration Insolvency Trusteeship Agency (RITA), birth certificate registration has been made compulsory by the law. Despite such efforts made by the government to boost and ensure birth certificates, most of the setbacks like information flaws, home births, and remoteness of some areas of birth prevent many parents from accessing the service.
Despite of the setbacks, Andrea Guzzoni, Country Manager of Jovago Tanzania explained that there are a number of reported challenges unregistered children might face inclusive of: “Difficulties in accessing passports, opening a bank account and complications in joining higher learning institutions as they request for birth certificates. Also hindrances may arise when searching for certain jobs as many employers request for birth certificate. Another future challenge is proving the age before the court of law. A child may later lack credible information to provide before the court which may hinder several rights that may be required to be granted, this proves how birth certificates are very important to be issued in life of a child”.
Several initiatives have been created by the Tanzanian government to improve birth registration in the country by joining hands with other stakeholders. RITA, UNICEF and in May 2015 TIGO, through joint efforts succeeded to introduce mobile phone registration system in Mbeya region, this allows parents and health workers to register for birth certificates in no time.
According to UNICEF, before the introduction of the system, there were more than 383,000 unregistered children under 5 in Mbeya, six months later more than 150,000 under-5 children were registered thus reviving the prospect of registering as many children as possible in other regions as far as the system is concerned.
Mr. Guzzoni explained that “JOVAGO’s alliance with UNICEF aims to support the initiative to support birth registration in African continent. Having saying so, we have to make sure this movement of birth registration is taken more serious in each village and in all sectors since birth certificates are of paramount importance to every citizen”.
About Jovago
Jovago.com is an online hotel booking service with offices in Lagos (Nigeria), Nairobi (Kenya), Dakar (Senegal) founded by Africa Internet Group and has MTN and Millicom as its investors. Jovago.com, Africa’s No.1 booking portal, facilitates the booking process for its users to provide them with the best hotel booking experience with fast, transparent and easy-to-use services. Jovago.com has over 20,000 local hotel listings across Africa and over 200,000 hotels around the world.