By: Saidu Jalloh (Intern)
The Director General of National of Civic Registration Authority (NCRA), Mohamed Mubashiru Massaquoi on 21st of September 2023 in a press conference revealed the Vital Statistics report at Shangri – la Hotel Lumley Beach, Freetown.
He said the Vital Statistics report is important because it helps government in planning and sharing the resources and also helps government to know how certain events occur and how the occurred.
The Director General said they were going through the vital statistics report on events that were mandated by law to report with regards the country and those vital events included births, deaths, causes of deaths, marriages, divorces, adoption and nullities. Mr. Massaquoi also added that Vital Statistic in basic terms gives characteristics or features of those events, guided those events, what they look like, how they occur, when they occurred and the processes of their occurrences.
“We have done that report for the past couple of months from 2022, so today and tomorrow, we have invited all stake holders in government and some ministries department, civil society organization UN Agencies and other international partners are all here,” NCRA Director General explained.
Mr. Mohamed Mubashiru Massaquoi furthered that they were basically going through the report and validated it, discussed the content and analyzed the data that they had collected for the preparation of the country for 2023/24, and then they agreed on it and that was the process of validation.
“Once it was validated the law would give them the authority as an institution to publish and disseminate the statistics to the world and as a government they would know exactly what had happen to their population in 2023 in terms of those events to inform government policies and intervention,” DG said.
Massaquoi explained the important of the National Civic Registration saying that the civil registration data had been considered worldwide and most reliable data. It was on those bases, it is permanent in nature and universal and compulsory. It was not as we wished it was the law that said it was mandatory to report the occurrence of each of those events, he narrated.
He added that if you give birth, you must report of that birth for it to be registered with an evidence of its registration which is certification. Also if a death occurs the laws it is mandatory before that deceased is buried, you must report the dead and when that happens before we certify it for burial as an authority; we will require a medical certificate of the cause of the death to the medical professionals to give us an indication and clear picture to what may have responsible for that death.
“Where there are no medical professional, because they are limited in number in the country, we have what we call an indicative cause of death and we record it. That information is very important to government in terms of planning and the developing the lives of the people or improving the lives of people. Government for instance may want to know what is killing its people, what diseases is prevalent in the country and government plans to contain it,’’ Mr. Massaquoi opined.
The Assistant Director General at the Ministry of Gender and Children Affairs, Bamie Sesay gave his opinion on the Vital Statistic Report. He expressed that it was important to hold such meetings and get opinions from different people, and also Civic Registration is essential for effective planning and collating data. Bamie Sesay also said that from gender perspective, he thought that vital statistic was playing a vital role especially when it is about understanding and addressing gender role and also helps to transforms gender equality role and how far government had gone with gender policies and program.
The Public Health Officer and Head of Cemetery, Abdurrahman Pakie explained that Civic Registration is contributing to national development and also supported the SDGs. As a council they were hoping that NCRA would team up with them because they had more than 12 cemeteries and were thinking how they would collect all data. It would be only them [NCRA] to team with us to bring out a formidable data.
The meeting continues today.
