Technical glitches mar birth and death certificate generation

With the government mandated issuance of birth and death certificates online throughout the State, Subash Kumar is not the only person facing this ordeal while downloading the much need documents.

“We have to enter the details of deaths and births based on the details provided by hospitals. As government hospitals are providing records once in a week or more, several files pile up. Sanitary inspectors could not generate the certificates for births and deaths occurred before December 31, as the window was closed,” a Chennai Corporation health department official said.

The official added that many residents approach them for certificates, but they could not generate certificates. “Corporation should write to the Directorate of Public Health and seek to rectify the problem. However, repeated notes sent by many field level officials went unnoticed,” he added.

Even some residents are facing difficulties to download birth certificates after the inclusion of children’ names due to another software issue. “We are updating the children’s names in the certificates based on applications received. But applicants complain that they could not download the updated certificates,” the official said.

Meanwhile, another source said that registration of thousands of events (birth and death) are pending from November 26 due to the shortage of manpower and computers.

According to the source, Zones such as Anna Nagar, Royapuram, Teynampet and others are witnessing nearly 100 events each per day. “Zones have only three computers each to register birth and deaths. These devices are not sufficient for the Zones with many government hospitals,” the source added.

When asked, a senior official of Corporation said that he has not received any complaints from the public and would act upon in case of complaints.