Home Affairs offers birth registration on long weekend

The Department of Home Affairs will be offering birth registration services this Human Rights Day weekend at health facilities nationwide.

JOHANNESBURG, March 20 (ANA) – The Department of Home Affairs will be offering birth registration services this Human Rights Day weekend at health facilities nationwide, it said in a statement on Friday.

The registration weekend is held to assist parents to register their children within 30 days of birth as is required by the law.

This is the second weekend that the department is celebrating Human Rights Month by extending services which can help parents and their children to access key government and other services.

During the first weekend registration drive on March 13, there were 2,060 births registered.

This year’s Human Rights Day will be commemorated on Sunday under the theme: “The year of Charlotte Maxeke: promoting human rights in the age of Covid-19”.

“By registering births immediately or within the first 30 days of such births, parents contribute to promoting their children’s human rights,” the department said in its statement.

“Birth registration marks the beginning of the fulfilment of the constitutional right to citizenship and protects the child’s right to a name and a nationality at birth. Failure to register the child is tantamount to denial of the child’s right to citizenship.”

Home Affairs officials will be at offices at health facilities from 8am until 3pm daily on March 20 to 22.

The department urged everyone who comes to register their child to observe Covid-19 protocols, including physical distancing, sanitising their hands regularly and wearing face masks properly.

Nobody will be assisted if they are not wearing their masks properly, the department said.

– African News Agency (ANA); Editing by Yaron Blecher