More than 9,000 nameless kids now registered
EFFORTS by the Registrar General’s Department (RGD) to register some 18,000 children whose names are not on its records have met with marginal success, but not through the “Name the Child Project” as would have been expected.
Patricia Holness, chief executive officer at the RGD told the Observer that while 9,733 names had been recorded by the RGD to date, only 733 of those had come from the “Name the Child Project”, which began last month.
“Of the 18,000 we have been able to clear 9,000-odd, using the normal certificate of naming system prior to the blitz which we had. But since the ‘Name the Child Project’, which covers persons born January 2003 to August 2004, we have seen 733,” Holness said.
However, she said some people still have not benefited from the current drive because of their inability to pay the discounted fee of $500. The normal registration process costs $2,000.
Meanwhile, she said it was expected that the mobile team would be able to cover the five remaining parishes of Clarendon, Hanover, Westmoreland, St Elizabeth and Manchester by mid-October.
The RGD head said, so far, the bulk of the responses have been from the parishes of Kingston, St Catherine and St Ann.