Auditor-General pokes holes in births, deaths register

Kenya's births and deaths register has been exposed after Auditor-General Nancy Gathungu poked holes into its credibility in the latest performance audit report on the Civil Registration Services (CRS).

The 2020 audit report by Ms Gathungu before parliament, puts the government’s CRS data on the spot as it cannot fully document the number of births and deaths happening in the country on an annual basis.

The latest revelation casts doubts on the government’s ability to fully rely on the available data for planning and resource allocation for various activities and services to the public.

Other than undertaking registration, CRS is also required to ensure that birth and death certificates are issued on a timely basis.

However, this has not happened, dampening the registration department’s strategic objectives and the ability to raise the registration of births and deaths to 100 percent in the coming years.

“CRS has not been able to perform the functions as expected since the registration coverage is not yet 100 per cent. There have been delays in the issuance of birth and death certificates,” the performance audit states.

The audit shows that a review of the Kenya Vital Statistics report of 2018, indicated that the national coverage for births was 1.1 million, which is 73.4 percent of the 1.6 million births estimated and 192,019 deaths, about 40.5 percent against the expected figure of 473,927.

Delays in timely issuance of birth and death certificates promote a negative impact on policy decisions that must rely on statistics like population in the country and causes of deaths.

In 2014, the country recorded 954,254 births against the expected target of 1.41 million with deaths standing at 198,611 against 435,769 and in 2015, despite projecting to register 1.44 million births, only 950,224 were captured.

The same year, 200,205 deaths were registered against the projected 442,966.

During 2016, 948,351 births were registered against the estimated 1.5 million with deaths at 189,930 compared to the estimated 453,286.

In 2017, the country had expected to register 1.52 million births but only 923,487 were captured.

During the same year, 463,607 deaths were expected to be registered but only 190,877 were captured in the government records.

The report blames the Ministry of Interior, under whose watch CRS is domiciled, for not providing the necessary funding in line with the approved budget.

The document shows that for instance in the 2015/16 financial year, CRS collected Sh111.7 million in revenue but was only allocated Sh64.1 million, about 57 percent for its operations.

In the 2017/18 financial year, CRS collected Sh315.43 million but only Sh71.1 million was allocated, which is about 23 percent of the revenue base. 

The CRS service charter provides that it should take two days to process and issue a birth or death certificate in Nairobi and Mombasa and a day in other sub-county offices across the country.

However, this is not the case as those seeking registration are forced to wait for months or even years.

More puzzling is the fact that the government through the CRS has not created a need for the registration despite its importance in national planning.

The citizens also do not understand the need for civil registration and the importance of obtaining birth and death certificates.

The failure to fully implement automated processes and digitization of birth and death records for increased efficiency has created apathy to citizens who have ignored the exercise despite its national importance.

The document notes that registration happens only when there is a need to be driven- during registration for national examinations, processing of death benefits or application for travel documents.

The Births and Deaths Registration Act mandates the country’s civil registration department to register all births and deaths that occur in the country without regard to nationality.

The registration and timely issuance of certificates aids in the provision of accurate vital statistics to different users within the government and beyond.

The failures at the CRS means that the government has to incur more costs to get the accurate data for its planning obligations like incurring additional costs to do population census, which happen after every 10 years, to accurately predict the country’s population.

The population census done in 2009 cost about Sh8 billion while the cost for the 2019 census was about Sh18.5 billion.

“Accurate and up to date vital data from the CRS would be useful in corroborating census data and also short term and medium term planning,” the audit notes.