Maputo, 31 Mar (AIM) – The Ministry of Justice of Mozambique launched a campaign for Free Birth Registration with the aim of promoting citizens’ access to civil identification.

The project, which is expected to cover around 7 million people, will register 25 thousand citizens per day.

The campaign, scheduled to run from March 23rd to December 31st, will be carried out by up to 500 mobile brigades, which will travel to communities to register births and issue identification documents.

According to the Minister of Justice, Mateus Saize, cited in a statement addressed to the civil registry offices, the measure aims to respond to the “critical deficit in birth registration and the high number of citizens without legal identification in the country”.

“The brigades will operate in districts, administrative posts and localities, aiming to reach citizens who, for various reasons, do not have access to formal services. The initiative aims to invert the traditional model, taking services directly to the population”, the note reads.

The technical teams include employees from the Ministry of Justice, responsible for civil registration and issuing birth certificates, and agents from the Ministry of the Interior, who will simultaneously issue Identity Cards.

All services provided within the scope of this campaign will be free. “The civil registry offices were instructed to ensure the free registration of all requests submitted during the period in which the measure was in force”, the document reads.

The operation costs will be financed by the EDGE Mozambique Project, which is a Digital Governance initiative financed by the World Bank, focused on digital identification, public services and the digital economy.

This could be a step towards ending the absurd situation in which identity cards are, in theory, mandatory, but a large number of citizens do not have them.
(AIM)
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