Traditional leaders to record births and deaths

Harare (New Ziana) -Traditional leaders in the country will soon be recording births and deaths in their communities as the government moves to improve the collection of statistics, a cabinet Minister has said.

Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage Minister Kazembe Kazembe said this during a post Cabinet media briefing on Tuesday.

He said the move is part of plans by the Civil Registry Department to implement active notification of community births and deaths to ensure ease of planning, policy, decision making and good governance.

The plans will entail capacitating traditional leaders who will capture community births and deaths on specially designed forms for onward transmission to district offices as part of improving the civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) system in the Civil Registry Department.

“The notification forms will serve the same purpose as birth confirmation records issued at health facilities. The data submitted by traditional leaders will be captured at district level,” he said.

Kazembe said the program, whose benefits include empowering traditional leaders to effectively executive their mandate under the Births and Deaths Registration Act, improving the registration of births and deaths in rural areas and reducing costs of obtaining essential documentation for rural communities, will be piloted in 14 districts before its roll-out to all parts of the country.

Obtaining essential documents will also be made easier as the need for many witnesses will be eliminated while registration of births and deaths will become faster.

New Ziana