18 May 2014

Residents of Tsau and Sehithwa in the North West District have been encouraged to register births and deaths of their relatives to help government departments to plan accordingly.

Speaking at a kgotla meeting on May 15, the Minister of Labour and Home Affairs, Mr Edwin Batshu said children should be registered within 60 days of their birth.

He said once they were registered, it would enable the Ministry of Education and Skills Development to make projections based on the number of students to expect in the near future and also for the Ministry of Health to budget for their early vaccinations.

The minister said it was necessary to register people who had died and issue death certificates because the records were a main source for vital statistics, adding that last year, they registered 93 000 births and 14 707 deaths.

Such statistics, he said helped the health ministry in its planning processes to know how many patients they would cater for, the quantity of drugs that would be needed for high blood pressure and other diseases. He said unregistered deaths cost government because they continued to be budgeted for.

The minister also informed residents about citizenship adding that if a child was born in Botswana and the father was a foreigner that child carried dual citizenship until 21 years of age, where they would choose the citizenship they wanted. He noted that many times children were not aware of this and urged them to take action and choose citizenship.

He said he was aware that some Baherero people from Ngamiland wanted to go back to Namibia and are still awaiting response following the letter they wrote to the Namibian government last year.Minister urged residents to collect their passports, as they are only kept in the office for six months and after that applicants would have to re-apply at their own costs. ENDS