Unregistered births, deaths blight Kenya’s planning credentials

With billions of shillings pumped into development programmes annually, tracking the impact of such resources on the country’s overall development is critical.

However, like in many other developing nations, measuring progress in Kenya remains a challenge due to lack of quality and timely data on aspects such as child births and mortality, which is critical to planning healthcare programmes.

Having a legal identity, name, nationality, proof of age is also important human rights because they enable individuals to exercise their rights such participation in elections and enjoy various government, social, and private services.

Recent estimations by the World Bank show that about half of the world’s population live in countries where causes of death are normally partially recorded and are of limited use.

It notes that correct reporting of cause of death is particularly difficult in developing countries where many deaths occur at home without medical care or certification.

Contrastingly, in high income countries, this information is routinely available from death registration records, which are part of their civil registration systems (CRS) —turning the spotlight on developing nations to implement the systems which are critical for measuring and monitoring development.

“Having an effective Civil Registration and Vital Statistics System (CRVS) is critical for planning and monitoring programmes across several sectors. Yet, over 110 low- and middle-income countries have deficient CRVS systems,” the World Bank says.

A new audit shows that Kenya is among laggard nations in terms of instituting a reliable CRS.

Registration of births and deaths is carried out with the help of assistant chiefs and health workers in sub-counties (constituencies) and by health institutions, respectively.

The department of Civil Registration compiles data from sub-county and heath institutions, analyses and disseminates the vital statistics.

A performance audit of the department shows that registration happens only when it is need-driven.

This is during registration for national examinations, processing of death benefits or application for travel documents.

“This is despite the Births and Deaths Registration Act mandating the civil registration department to register all births and deaths that occur in the country without regard to nationality,” Ms Nancy Gathungu, the Auditor-General says in a performance audit report of the CRS.

Low public awareness

Ms Gathungu observes that citizens do not understand the need for civil registration and the importance of obtaining birth and death certificates.

She says 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 mean that the government has to incur more costs to get the accurate data for its planning obligations.

For instance, the government has to pay more for censuses every 10 years to accurately predict the population.

The population census done in 2009 cost taxpayers about Sh8 billion while the cost for the 2019 headcount was Sh18.5 billion to document 47.5 million Kenyans.

“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.

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

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

“However, this has not happened, dampening the department’s strategic objectives to raise the registration of births and deaths to 100 per cent by 2017,” the auditor notes in the report.

The audit reveals that CRS has not been able to perform the functions as expected since the registration coverage is not yet 100 per cent.

“There have also been delays in the issuance of birth and death certificates,” Ms Gathungu says.

A review of the Kenya Vital Statistics Report of 2019, indicates that the national coverage for births was 1.18 million, which is 75.7 per cent of the 1.56 million births estimated and 190,696 deaths, about 43 per cent against the expected figure of 443,764.

Ms Gathungu says all births and deaths occurring in the country may not have been registered since the government has only digitised records up to 2014.

“The audit, however…indicated that the department had digitised only 15,486,002 (40 per cent) of its 39,155,161 birth records and 593,825 (10 per cent) of its 5,703,161 death records,” the report notes.

Ms Gathungu wants the Civil Registration Service to digitise all its manual births and deaths records for ease of access, search and processing by all civil registration officers.

Missed registration targets

The Civil Registration Department is expected to register all the births and deaths occurring in the country, and subsequent issuance of certificates is done on a timely basis.

The latest audit recommends that the government should push for registration of vital events to ensure that citizens obtain the documents at all times as opposed to need driven.

“The Civil Registration Services cannot fully account for all births and deaths happening in the country since registration rates are still below 100 per cent.

“As a result, the government and other stakeholders cannot fully rely on its data for planning and resource allocation for various activities and services to the public,” the report notes.

The State auditor proposes that the Interior Ministry moves with speed to automate or digitise the civil registration services processes for increased efficiency.

“The ministry for Interior has not been providing all the funding for the CRS in line with the approved budget.

“This has created huge staffing gaps and resource constraints, resulting to poor service delivery,” Ms Gathungu says.

She also faults the current practice where assistant chiefs of sub locations and health workers are used by the CRS department to capture vital data.

“In view of the findings and conclusions of the audit, the Auditor-General proposes that …the Ministry of Interior and Coordination and National Government ensures that the Civil Registration Services carries out its intended functions,” Ms Gathungu says.

Inadequate funding

The report indicates that the Civil Registration Department received Sh2.8 billion, an increase from Sh893.9 million in the financial year 2015/16 and Sh1.02 billion in the year 2017/18.

The audit cites the 2015/16 financial year where the CRS collected Sh111.7 million in revenue arising from issuance of birth and death certificates but was only allocated Sh64.1 million, about 57 per cent, for its operations.

The CRS further collected Sh315.43 million but was allocated Sh71.1 million, about 23 per cent of the revenue base in the 2017/18 financial year.

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 sub-county offices.

But this is not the case as those seeking registration are forced to wait weeks or even months.

In a bid to improve accuracy of CRS records in Kenya, a Bill by Gilgil legislator Martha Wangari proposes to introduce a civil registry in each of the 290 constituencies.

The Birth and Deaths Registration (Amendment) Bill, 2020 is currently before the National Assembly.

There were 111 registration offices countrywide as at 2019 which served Kenya’s population of 47.8 million, translating to 430,630 persons per civil registration office.

“The object of this Bill is to ensure that the Cabinet Secretary establishes at least one registration area in each constituency,” reads the memorandum of object and reasons of the Bill.