N AT I O N A L I N Q U I R Y R E P O R T ZIMBABWE HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION For Human Dignity 3.2.10 Cumbersome Process for Home Birth Registrations The process of registering home deliveries was cumbersome requiring a litany of supporting evidence such as presence of midwives, witnesses and letters from school and/ or community leaders. This led to late or non-registration of children born at home. Registration becomes more complex to effect due to factors that include migration, separation of parents and death or unknown whereabouts of midwives and travel costs involved. 3.2.11 “I am failing to acquire a birth certificate for my son who was born at home. I went to Makoni, and they requested for a midwife. I complied, then they said they will come for a home visit. Still nothing has materialized to date. I last followed up last year around May 2018. One time I went with my neighbours to bear witness for me, but they said they will pay a home visit to verify if the child was indeed born at home. We have visited the DRG Office more than 10 times, but nothing has come out of it”, 44-yearold male witness, Chitungwiza, Harare Metropolitan Province. Centralisation of National Documentation Services One-point eight percent (1.8%) of testimonies submitted indicated that long distances to the DRG offices were a stumbling block in their quest to obtain documents, especially for people in remote rural areas. The DRG has made efforts to decentralise their offices in all provinces and districts, establishment of registration offices in all major hospitals, computerisation of vital registration events and conducting mobile registrations in remote areas. However, a lot more needs to be done to further decentralise and make the offices accessible to all communities. A trend that emerged was that people were failing to access documents due to unaffordable travel costs. “In Mashonaland Central province, we have 1 provincial office, 8 district offices and 22 suboffices. While this is commendable, sadly, it is not sufficient…. There is need to increase resource allocation to ensure that there are at least 50 sub-offices in the province and that mobile registration exercises are done every 2 years, to ensure we reach people in some of the most inaccessible areas in the province.” Provincial Registrar, Mashonaland Central Province. Figure 11 below illustrates the effects of centralised offices and services of the DRG. Inadequate Geographical Location of Offices, poorly resourced and limited operational suboffices. Limited service provision Passport Applications CENTRALISED only at Provincial offices. unaffordable transport costs to access services RG Offices and Services Repair of Equipment Citizenship applications at Head Quarters in Harare only in Harare Delays in processing documents unaffordable transport costs to access services Figure 11 Centralised RG's Department and Services 23 23