Of the 300 corporate hospitals and nursing homes in Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) limits, over 200 of them do not have online facility for registration of birth and death events, resulting in untold hardships to the people in obtaining the birth and death certificates from the corporation.
Due to lack of online link between the GHMC and 200 odd hospitals, it is taking afew weeks for people to obtain the birth and death certificates.
If such an online link existed, people could have got the birth and death certificates in less than five days. Only some 100 hospitals have the online registration facility with the GHMC.
Where there is no online link, the hospitals concerned have to send physical reports of birth and death within 21 days from the date of their occurrence to the GHMC for registration.
The corporation will then register the events and issue the certificates to the applicants through the eight GHMC Circles of Citizens Service Centres (CSCs) and Mee Seva centres.
The applicants have to pay the prescribed fees for the certificates and collect them three days from the date of application.
GHMC Commissioner M T Krishna Babu told Express that the corporation had asked the hospitals and nursing homes to establish online registration facility with it for the issuance of birth and death certificates by installing computers and appointing necessary manpower but the response was poor from the hospital managements.
Same was the case with many government hospitals as they lacked manpower, computers and online facilities, he said and added that the GHMC staff had to go and collect the data from those hospitals.
According to another GHMC official, to avoid the 21-day time for the issuance of the birth and death certificates, the corporation has provided the user names and passwords to about 100 hospitals exclusively for birth and death events.
These hospitals notify the GHMC online about the births and deaths within five days of their occurrence.
The GHMC then verifies the duplications of the same event within 24 hours and enables the citizens to get the certificate from any of the CSC or Mee Seva centres.
On an average, 1.8 lakh births are recorded every year -- averaging 630 births per day. On an average 150 applications are disposed of per day.
The GHMC will once again urge hospitals and nursing homes to establish online facilities with the GHMC for the registration of birth and death events for providing hassle-free certificates in a few days’ time.