RI's birth registration system still poor

JAKARTA (JP): Plan International, a British based non-government organization, blames the country's poor birth registration system on unaccounted newborn babies nationwide.

Nono Sumarsono, Plan International representative in Indonesia, said the organization estimated that 30 percent of all newborn babies were not covered by civilian registration offices nationwide each year.

"According to our annual surveys, one out of three newborn babies is not registered because of the poor civil registration system and the centralization of registration offices in regencies and mayoralties," Nono said in a meeting with Minister of Home Affairs and Regional Autonomy Surjadi Soedirdja here on Monday.

He said most parents, mostly in rural and remote areas, were reluctant to have their newly born children registered at civil registration offices because of the distance between their home villages and registration offices in the regency capitals and of the fees they had to pay for the registration.

"Most people, especially in rural and remote areas, are not aware of the importance of the birth registration, while the birth registration offices are not proactive enough in carrying out their mission because of the absence of the government's strong political will," he said.

Jap van der Straten, secretary of UN's Asia Birth Registration Committee, said the poor birth registration system in Indonesia had a lot to do with discriminative birth registration regulations which were inherited from the Dutch colonial administration.

"According to the rulings that are still effective till now, the birth registration is based on race, religion and social status so that many newborn babies of families whose religion is not included in the list of religions recognized by the government, or those from unlisted ethnic groups, are not registered," he said.

He said that during the Dutch colonial era, only babies of Muslim and Christian parents and of royal, bureaucrat and rich families, were registered.

Der Straten said the birth registration was important in line with the protection of child rights in Indonesia and the improvement of their health condition.

He said millions of children in Indonesia have been exploited for commercial purposes. He cited street children who have been exploited by their parents to work as beggars or employed to work in fisheries and home industries, and of underage women employed in red-light districts and massage centers.

"Numerous workers have been exported overseas with fake documents and marked-up ages because of the absence of their birth registration certificates," he said, while criticizing the immigration offices for issuing passports with fake birth registration certificates.

Der Straten suggested that the government should make a new law on birth registration which was equally obligatory for all newborn children and intensify the national education program to send school-age children to school.

He said Indonesia could save a lot of money if the birth registration is launched as a national program, so that it would not be necessary to hold the five-yearly population census.

"Indonesia could learn from Belgium and Thailand that have had an integral birth registration system so that people in the two countries need no 'master identity' card for their bank purposes because they have their own birth registration certificates," he said.

He said the Asia Birth Committee was organizing a five-day workshop in Jakarta and Surabaya, starting on Monday, to share experience on birth registration among 80 participating countries, including Thailand, Bangladesh, China, India and host Indonesia. (rms)