Dhaka mayors want entire process at councillor office

While pointing out several mismanagements and the low number of birth and death registration at local government offices, two mayors of Dhaka city corporations called for completing all the procedures for such registrations at the offices of the ward councillors.

The mayors made the call while attending a discussion on National Birth and Death Registration Day 2022 on Sunday. Local Government and Rural Development Minister Md Tajul Islam was the chief guest in the programme.

Dhaka North City Corporation Mayor Md Atiqul Islam said that the registration server remains busy (inaccessible) during the day, so the staff at the ward councillor’s office have to complete the task at night.

“As they cannot provide services when in need and to reduce suffering, people assign a middleman for the job which is tarnishing our reputation as well,” he said.

Server complexity increases further when enrolling in school, he added.

Referring to the suffering of the birth registration process, Mayor Atiqul said the situation worsens when people fail to find anyone from the server management when the server does not work. A separate phone number should be given for this, he said.

And if any sort of mistake has been made, then they need to suffer for next the 90 days at the Deputy Commissioner’s office to correct the mistake. And if the DC Office corrects the mistakes, it needs another week to update the information on the system, he added.

The birth-death registration process should be arranged at the ward level, he said.

Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC) Mayor Sheikh Fazle Noor Taposh also echoed Atiq’s claim and said those who are working with birth registration need to ease the process.

Previously, Dhaka City Corporation had five regional offices and now it has become ten. But the manpower has remained the same. Besides, no official was previously assigned for the registration earlier. So, manpower is hurting their efforts as well.

LGRD minister Tajul Islam admitted that there are some lacking in the management and some budget issues as well.

Many rules and systems in the process have been changed and necessary changes would also take place soon to ease the registration process, he added.

Assuring further measures to solve the problems, the minister said, “We can spend Tk700 crore for census, but could not be able to provide Tk7 crore for server development. That cannot be done.”