RGD Clears Free Birth Certificate Backlog

The Registrar General’s Department (RGD) is reporting that it has improved its operational capacity to address the printing backlog of free birth certificates experienced in 2023.

Persons are allowed the first copy of a child’s birth certificate free of cost.

However, last year, the RGD experienced challenges with providing the service, due to issues with logistics.

Speaking at a JIS Think Tank on March 21, the RGD’s Chief Executive Officer Charlton McFarlane, explained there were “significant delays” in the shipping of the security paper on which the certificates are printed.

“There were several logistics challenges, primarily related to shipping that led to a delay in the arrival of the security paper. They were to arrive in September of 2022 but came in February of 2023,” Mr. McFarlane said.

He noted that with the delay, the RGD had to pivot and prioritise the services that were paid for by customers.

“Operationally, what the RGD had to do was to prioritise; so, for persons who paid for the same-day service and the next-day service, we prioritised those. We had to go even a step further and tell our customers that even though you may pay for two certificates, we will only be able to provide one.

The first-copy free service suffered a little,” Mr. McFarlane noted.

He said that the matter has since been resolved and the entity has also added more printers to manage the demand.

“We have overcome that, and in addition we also added capacity since last year because for the first time, we have three fully functioning printers. We are now able to dedicate printers to the various services. Since that time, we also have received our full quota of security paper and we also increased our capacity to print our certificates,’’ Mr. McFarlane noted.

He expressed sincere apologies to customers who were impacted during the period.

“I know we also made significant efforts to alert the public to the challenges that we were having at that time, but nonetheless, we do apologise for the inconvenience. It was primarily due to logistical challenges with the delivery date and the delivery schedule of the certificates,” Mr. McFarlane reiterated.