Passport applications…Birth certificate requirement to protect against identify theft - Rohee

Passport applications…Birth certificate requirement to protect against identify theft – Rohee

Jun 18, 2014 News

Home Affairs Minister Clement Rohee has responded to concerns raised by first-time applicants for machine readable

Home Affairs Minister, Clement Rohee

passports having to present a birth certificate that was obtained no more than six months prior to the date of application.
That announcement was made by the Police Public Relations Department in response to queries from this newspaper, after a first-time applicant travelled all the way from Anna Regina, Essequibo, only to be told that the birth certificate he presented to immigration officials was invalid.
The Home Affairs Ministry had said that the machine readable passport was introduced in 2007 and to ensure that the passport was less susceptible to forgery, the directive coming from the Guyana Police Force was given for applicants to furnish birth certificates no older than six months.
The Ministry outlined that for integrity purposes it is now reinforcing its policy directive originally given to the Guyana Police Force.
“This process is necessary to enable Guyana to comply with international best practices and prevent illegal use of travel documents.”
APNU Shadow Minister of Public Works and Telecommunications, Joseph Harmon, had said however that it is “a most ridiculous requirement. If you are a first-time applicant for the passport, what will a recently issued birth certificate do to enhance one’s integrity? How does the old one diminish one’s eligibility for the passport? In making rules we have to be sensible.
The Parliamentarian said further that if Government has reason to believe that a birth certificate was not properly obtained it has the ability to check that.
“This new requirement will put an additional burden on the system and put a new sort of backlog in place. I don’t know if it is an attempt to stem the flow of people applying for passports, but it certainly is, to my mind, a hindrance and a fetter on the freedom of movement of citizens and government should reconsider it.”
Rohee, pronouncing on the situation, said that one of the reasons why the directive for persons to produce a birth certificate not more than six months old was given was “because there are a lot of people applying for passports with false birth certificates, presenting it and stealing someone else’s identity.”
“If you go with a false birth certificate and you present it with wrong information you will obviously be perpetuating a false identity,” the Home Affairs Minister said.
He continued that the idea behind the decision was that if persons that have false birth certificates knew that they had to get a copy no less than six months old, then they would not be inclined to take the risk and go through the corrupt process of getting back a fake certificate.
More so he said “when they get a copy of the new birth certificate that is no more than six months old they will take out from the record the exact information that is there.”
Speaking to whether the person could use the information on the bogus certificate to get a new bogus birth certificate Rohee said “the bogus certificate was written by somebody else and was not issued from the General Register Office [GRO].”
Providing an example Rohee said “let’s say you are working with the GRO ten years ago and you are issued a false birth certificate and you are not working there now and new persons are there, it would mean that a new person would have to be bribed to repeat the same information, but the system that is now set up, there are four or five persons having different responsibilities, so if you want to get a bogus birth certificate you now have to bribe four or five persons which is less likely to happen.”
Rohee in further substantiating his reason why the decision was made said “People go to the American Embassy and the Canadian Embassy with bogus birth or marriage certificates and the Embassy says okay, could you go and get a recent birth and marriage certificate, and that is where they are caught.”
The Home Affairs Ministry had said that it is “conscious of the temporary inconvenience members of the public will suffer and expects that the Guyana Police Force will take all necessary steps to negate any difficulties that members of the public, especially those who need special assistance, may experience.”