Dead bodies can’t be buried without permit - Ministry
The public has been reminded that it is illegal to bury dead bodies without acquiring a burial permit or death certificate.
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The Director of Research, Statistics and Information Management of the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, Ms Dorothy Onny, who gave the reminder, said the non– registration of deaths and the indiscriminate interment of human bodies resulted in the loss of information on the deaths that occurred in the country, while the situation also had an effect on health and other issues affecting the environment.
Ms Onny was addressing a news conference in Accra last Tuesday to mark the launch of the 12th Births and Deaths Registration Awareness Creation Day.
In attendance were staff of the Department of Births and Deaths. Ms Onny urged the district assemblies to ensure that all burial grounds, both public and private, were registered and controlled by them to ensure compliance with the law.
The purpose of the celebration since it begun in 2004, and usually marked in September every year, is to raise the level of awareness of the importance of births and deaths registration.
It is also aimed at courting governmental and institutional support for building a viable and sustainable civil registration system in the country.
This year’s event was celebrated on the theme, “Birth and Deaths Registration: A Primary Source of Data for a Credible Identification System”.
Civic responsibility
Ms Onny, who described the registration of births and deaths as a civic responsibility, also pointed out that individuals’s social and civic rights devolved from being registered at birth.
“The failure of parents to fulfil this responsibility on the child’s behalf leads to the child’s existence not being officially recognised and thus excluded from social development planning”, she explained.
Ms Onny said such children were also not factored when essential policy and budget decisions were made and therefore, they were denied many other privileges legitimately due them.
Registration is free
She stated that the registration of all children before their first birthday was free, just as the registration of death within 30 days of its occurrence was also free.
She expressed the hope that the public would take advantage of the dispensation to register all births and deaths as and when they occurred, stressing that deaths should be registered before burial.
Ms Onny solicited the help of the media to educate the general public on the need to register births and deaths.