Bangladesh's birth registration success impressive

Tanzania is willing to replicate the successful practices of Bangladesh in a host of public and private service projects, particularly the birth registration system.
Angellah Kairuki, deputy minister for constitutional and legal affairs of Tanzania, said, “I am highly impressed to see 90 percent achievement in birth registration in Bangladesh whereas Tanzania has recorded births of only 6.2 percent of its 44 million population.”
Angellah led a 16-member delegation from April 6-10 to Bangladesh with a key mission to learn how this country has achieved such a high level of success in registering birth.
Though the delegation could not visit adequately and go on to the field due to a series of hartal, it got highly impressed to learn about the processing of birth certificates, national identity cards, and passports and the operation of the data centre of Bangladesh Computer Council, Brac's model school, community health centre, Aarong's women-oriented programmes, fisheries and agricultural programmes, and micro financing.
In an interview with The Daily Star, Angellah said Tanzania was currently implementing the birth registration project, but it was very slow and not achieving the target. After hearing the success story of Bangladesh, the Tanzanian government sent the delegation to Bangladesh to gather knowledge and experience through spot visits, she said.
She said she was amazed to see civil servants, local government officials and graduates going from door to door and working hand-in-hand for birth registration.
The minister said she was impressed to know that computer was being used at the grassroots level for registration, and government officials were visiting villages. “The Bangladeshi people are well committed, honest and sincere, and thus the country is achieving successes in most of the projects,” she observed.
Angellah said her country had serious problems of early marriage, teenage pregnancy and dowry system when Bangladesh had greatly succeeded in reducing early marriage by making the birth certificate mandatory in marriage, school admission, and making passports.
“We have a lot of similarities in various sectors and our Millennium Development Goals are almost the same. So we need to collaborate to achieve the shared goals.”
Angellah said she would recommend that her government seek consultancy and technical support from Bangladesh to replicate the processes of birth registration, data gathering and preparing of the national identity cards, introducing Bangladesh-style service delivery system at the Department of Immigration and Passport, set up data centres like those of Bangladesh Computer Council, found Brac-style model schools and community health centres, and introduce other programmes of Brac and leading Bangladeshi NGOs.
The Tanzanian deputy minister said she would also recommend that her government open a full-fledged diplomatic mission in Dhaka in the near future to enhance bilateral, economic, trade and cultural cooperation with Bangladesh.
She said she was impressed to see the world class products in Bangladesh like jute goods, ceramics, RMG, and pharmaceuticals. These items might have a huge market in Tanzania, she said. “We truly want to strengthen our relations with Bangladesh and import quality items from Bangladesh.”
Angellah said on her return home, she would first recommend sending of a trade delegation to Bangladesh to explore trade and business opportunities.
“I can see that most of Bangladeshi products we can buy …even we can buy mustard oil, soap, cosmetics and toiletries items from Bangladesh. Quality of the products is very fine and prices are also within the buying capacity of the people of Tanzania.”
She said both the countries could be immensely benefited through trade and cooperation.