Inmates receive birth certificates under Operation Birthright
Published:Friday | February 17, 2023 | 12:47 AMRuddy Mathison - Gleaner Writer
Thirty-six inmates at the St Catherine Adult Correctional Centre were the first prison recipients of birth certificates under the Operation Birthright initiative at a handover ceremony at the facility on Wednesday.
The initiative is a government programme designed to reduce the number of Jamaicans without birth certificates who fall in the cohort of persons earning monthly incomes of $36,000 or below.
Minister without portfolio in the Office of the Prime Minister with responsibility for the Registrar General’s Department (RGD), Floyd Green, said the focus emerged when the Department of Correctional Services (DCS) requested inclusion under the programme.
“We have distributed 36 from the first batch of 120 inmates that have applied, so we are going to go through this process to see all those who are qualified for the programme and get their birth certificates done,” Green said.
While acknowledging that the number of inmates in the correctional services without birth certificates was unknown, Green is advocating for the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the RGD and the DCS.
“The Department of Corrections will go in to see what are the needs, and we will see what can be done in terms of accommodating them under the programme. There are also persons who are incarcerated who would have had birth certificates and lost them. We will have to treat these differently, maybe ... a subsidised birth certificate,” he said.
Green said that a public education campaign will be launched to raise awareness.
Minister of state in the Ministry of National Security, Zavia Mayne, speaking to the importance of the inmates having some form of identification, said the process must begin with obtaining a birth certificate.
“There are a lot of persons in our penal institutions who are without identifications. What we are doing here is important. Instead of persons coming here to be confined for whatever period the court would have mandated, we are offering programmes that will rehabilitate them to avoid recidivism,” Mayne said.
He argued that in order for inmates to be reintegrated in the society and become productive citizens, having a birth certificate is a part of that process.
“We plan to offer this service in all the correctional facilities, so the challenge for us is to ensure a greater take-up of this service,” Mayne added.
Meanwhile, chief executive officer at the RGD, Charlton McFarlane, said that people without a birth certificate are ‘invisible’ to their government.
“They could miss out on their rights being protected and upheld, as well as essential services. And while the RGD has made significant strides over the years to ensure registration of births, there still remain pockets of people without this significant document,” McFarlane stated.
He said investigations have found that socio-economic factors were the cause of many vulnerable Jamaicans not having the document.
McFarlane disclosed that the RGD is sufficiently staffed to deal with the national campaign.
Operation Birthright falls under the the National Identification System, a programme designed by the Government to facilitate the establishment of a secure national identification system.