PRESIDENT Bharrat Jagdeo yesterday signed a declaration by the Rights of the Child Commission (ROC) pledging to achieve universal registration of births by 2015 and underscored government’s continued support under a Donald Ramotar Presidency.
The signing took place at State House, in the presence of members of the Rights of the Child Commission.
“I want you to understand how important this is for us. It is going to be a big part of our Manifesto focussing on children. Women, the elderly, children continue to be priority of the Government. That manifesto will be launched on Saturday. So you are going to have the full support of the new Government,” the President told the Chairperson and members of the Rights of the Child Commission.
Chairperson of the Commission, Ms. Aleema Nasir, spoke to the media after the signing and explained what impacts she hoped the initiative achieves.
“We just concluded a study of an assessment done on birth registration in Guyana and the report was launched today. We asked the President to sign on to this document to give it some weight because there are some suggestions on the way forward on how we can achieve universal birth registration by 2015 and that is what the declaration states,” Nasir said.
Commenting on some of the findings of the report, Nasir said the report stated that poverty was not a great issue in the non-registration of children in Guyana. “Regions 1 and 7 had the highest rate of non-registration, given their geographical location. But even among Region 1, the areas that are closest to where the centres are had the highest rate of non-registration. So there is something there that needs to be investigated…the reason why people are not registering their children,” she said.
“This was a two-month study [involving] 1,700 plus children in all,” Nasir said, adding that the study took place in Regions 1, 2, 4 and 7. As to the reasons for choosing those regions, Nasir said that they wanted regions that could be compared to each other. “We wanted also to choose places [in which] the populations are of different races,” she said.
Nasir noted that there are some suggestions and recommendations in the study “and we are going to work towards following those recommendations in trying to achieve the universal declaration.” She said that the Rights of the Child Commission will be working with all agencies to achieve this goal, noting that the Ministry of Health will be instrumental in this effort because of the first contact with newborns by a doctor, nurse or midwife.
She said that while the Rights of the Child Commission has been around for some time, it is only now that the body is getting its feet on the ground in terms of funding and support. “Now we have the leverage to do what we have to do,” she said.