Birth Certificate casualties

A news item doing the rounds these days is that the official Certificate of Birth (CoB) is to undergo a format face-do.

One of the pertinent changes would be to scrap the requirement where parents of a newborn have to declare whether they are legally married or not. Authorities expect this move will ease one of the major invisible problems some parents face when seeking school admission for their children, and also will help to eradicate the stigmatization of the problematic paternity issue of an innocent child.

How the moralists will take up this move is yet to be seen!

If my memory serves me right, the person who proposed this idea first and came to the rescue of such hapless parents was none other than “ela Fowzie” (with due respect to the Gentleman) when he was the Minister of Health many years ago. He wanted to remove this sensitive, somewhat obnoxious and emotional agony causing information for some parents from the CoB. But for some unknown reason it did not see the light of day.

Carrying this failed move behind the back of my mind for many years, once I walked into an office of a Registrar of Births, Marriages and Deaths and told the female Registrar that I came with regard to a CoB matter. She wore a somewhat shy smile, maybe, thinking about my productivity at my three-score-and-two age and was ready to complete one for me !

When things were explained to her and when she showed me a blank CoB, I witnessed the said requirement still remaining there.

When I asked her how she managed to get that information from the informants she said that it sometimes causeed unpleasant or problematic situations for her.

She said a father who had come that morning to obtain the CoB for his baby born the previous day, had submitted all the necessary documents including their Certificate of Marriage, to which I said ” then, no problem madam “.

“Ayiyoo, ae unata ae denna bendala thiyenne pereyida !” ( Oh, but they had got married the day before yesterday !) she exclaimed, with her eyes wide open.

Both of us had a hearty laugh and I immediately left her office.

Have technology and medical science advanced in leaps and bounds to help the mothers-to-be to lessen the gestation period which, apparently , only a very few seem to be taking advantage of ?

Or had those wise duo, in the nick of time taken the appropriate step to register their marriage to save that innocent babe being stigmatized as a ” counterfeit” – courtesy the 6th cage in the CoB ?

D. SAMARANAYAKE

Battaramulla