This past week I saw something that really impressed me

Aug 07, 2011 Features / Columnists, My Column

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I am not easily impressed by many things these days. I have seen a lot. I saw men running so fast that it is almost impossible today to believe that the runners of today would have made a mess of those who appeared to be invincible just a few short years ago. Ben Johnson looked like lightning when he set the world 100 metres record at 9.79 seconds, in 1988, drug-aided I must admit. The world record is now an astounding 9.58 seconds.
Just a week ago a man was forced to tread water in the Atlantic Ocean for 17 hours because no boat was there to rescue him. Osama bin Laden is dead, killed by United States Navy Seals. And he died so easily. Just a few months ago this man was invisible and I had come to the belief that he would never be caught.
I saw people dying on the streets, the victims of gang wars and of people who hunted anyone with a criminal past. I watched Kaieteur News grow from nothing to be the country’s leading newspaper at a time when everyone in the country thought that there was no more room for a newspaper, given that the Guyana Chronicle and Stabroek News had gobbled up the market.
But this past week I saw something that really impressed me. I had heard that the people at the General Registrar’s Office (GRO) were working into the night to produce birth certificates to facilitate the national registration exercise. The authorities had reopened the process because they claimed that a substantial number of people ran the risk of being disenfranchised.
I called the General Registrar’s Office to do a story on the late-night shift. To be honest, the report had come that these people were up to dodges and that if I dug I would find some irregular act.  In the first instance I knew that with so many people involved it would be stupid for a small group to attempt anything illegal.
Everyone has his or her political position and if whatever was being done would not help that person’s political position then the word would get out. I was not too worried about the suspected illegality, I wanted to see for myself whether the criticisms by the Guyana Elections Commission and by some of the political parties about the General Registrar’s Office was indeed justified.
Mrs. Greta McDonald refused to talk to me on the phone. She simply said that if I wanted to know anything then I should simply visit the office. I was in for a shock. First of all, just about every day people demand birth certificates for whatever reason. The good thing was that the crowds are not there. The GRO processes somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 birth certificates per day.
When I was there, the office had to deal with birth certificates for the hinterland regions. The applications had come from Regions One, Seven, Eight and Nine. These were people whose births might have been registered but because of the remoteness of the location, the authorities could not take the time to have the information forwarded to the city.
And in cases where the information was forwarded, the document could not have been sent because there might simply have been no one to take them. But I distinctly recalled the commission talking about sending teams to the hinterland. Perhaps they went with the mindset that everyone was like their coastal counterparts, with all the source documents.
So there I was watching a man preparing to send out some 300 birth certificates by mail to various people along the coast. I saw the people called the writers, who must write up the birth certificate. Each told me that he or she would write up between 150 and 200 certificates each day. And they work for the minimum wage.
I learnt of the difficulties. People might have grown up being called one name and would have gone to school with that name. I have an aunt who swore that her name was Ivy. Her maiden name was Ivy Martin. Her passport was made out to Ivy Barker because by then she had married my uncle.
When she applied for her passport she got a shock. There was a difficulty. It was only when she correctly stated her mother’s name that the authorities found her registered birth. The woman was registered Josepha. She had problems later in life when she applied for American citizenship.
One staff member told me that such occurrences were commonplace and that many people would become frustrated and vent their spleen on the staff, who take it in stride. Then I saw the forgeries. They look like the real McKoy, but for the number they carry. The embassies and the police have had a field day catching up with these forgeries.
I went into the archives and saw the records dating back to the 1800s. These are in need of restoration and the government must spend money to have them stored electronically. Already records dating back to 1987 have been stored electronically.
I saw the system; I learnt that no one applies for a birth certificate directly to the GRO but through the post offices. This has helped eliminate the touts who made a living arranging birth certificates. That aspect of corruption has been done away with.
I saw the system that took care of the crowds for good; I heard the comments and I saw the efficiency of the staff.

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