A total number of 542 staff of the Births and Deaths Registry (BDR) at the Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies, have been officially ceded off from the Civil Service to the Local Government Service (LGS).
The move is to deepen the decentralisation of the operations of the Registry in order to bring services to the doorstep of every Ghanaian as well as ensure the registration of birth and death in an efficient and effective manner.
Speaking at the official ceding-off ceremony in Accra, a Deputy Minister for the Ministry Local Government, Decentralisation, and Rural Development (MLGDRD), Hon. Osei Bonsu Amoah said the government would ensure that the living conditions of the citizenry are improved by formulating appropriate policies and implementations at the local level through the work of the registry by the statistics they churn out.
He stated that the ceding-off was in accordance with the New Births and Deaths Act, 2020 (Act 1027), which will see to the nationwide promotion of registration and to improve the collection and collation of statistics in the country.
Hon. Amoah encouraged staff to work hard to realise the vision of the government and strengthen inter-sectoral collaboration to ensure the smooth implementation of regulations and programmes to satisfy the aspirations of the people.
The Head of Civil Service, Nana Kwasi Agyekum Dwamena indicated that the exercise was to deepen the democratic dispensation and bring services closer to the people while responding quickly to the citizenry down to the local level.
He assured the Office of the Head of Civil Service of his continued support to the Local Government Service to successfully go through the transition.
Dr. Nana Ato Arthur, Head of the Local Government Service, stressed the importance of taking the newly transferred staff through an orientation to enable them to understand and appreciate the local governance and decentralisation system.
The Registrar of Births and Deaths, Madam Henrietta Lamptey, , was optimistic that the transfer presented another opportunity to further decentralise the services of the Registry to deliver timely on its mandate.
SOURCE: PUBLIC RELATIONS UNIT (MLGDRD)