Thiruvananthapuram: Birth and death certificates issued by the city corporation dating back to 1950 will soon be accessible online.
The health wing of the city corporation is about to complete the process of entering data from birth and death records in the city for the period 1950-1970. Of the 78,652 records that could be retrieved from the files, the corporation completed data entry for 60,072 records.
It has been a laborious process for the staff involved, as many of the records were illegible or tattered. “We have recovered as many records as we can for the digitization process. Some of the old records have remained intact due to the quality of the paper, while other old records are easily chipped off by the passage of time. We had to handle such records carefully and do the data entry,” he said. SS MyRegistrar of Births and Deaths, Thiruvananthapuram City Corporation.
The civic body often receives requests from senior citizens to trace birth certificates dating back to before 1970. The requests are often made by people who want to travel abroad and keep their children.
“We were able to recover one such certificate that was issued back in 1933. The request came from a woman who was born in Thiruvananthapuram and later moved to Mumbai. She wanted to move to the US for which the birth certificate was required,” said SS Minu.
The officials said that the entire digitization process would be completed in about three months. From there, old birth and death certificates registered at hospitals subject to the corporation’s limits can be accessed online. The upcoming launch of the K-Smart app, a new initiative by the local self-government department, will also make the process easier, officials said.
The digitization process was previously carried out between 1985 and 1970. The process involves data entry, verification, and uploading of documents online. Old, crumbling records with moth-eaten pages make the process even more cumbersome for officials. In cases where documents are difficult to trace, the registrar can obtain government sanction and complete the verification process. The worst task is dealing with cases where registration would have involved a series of investigations.
“All pages must be tracked in such cases during the verification process and if the record is not properly maintained, each page must be carefully read. Sometimes the script may not be legible and we have to put the pages together to cross-check the information,” said a health official associated with the project.
Once the process is complete, individuals can download registration documents online by providing the name, address, or identification number provided on the document.
With the completion of the digitization process, the civic body plans to hand over the old registration documents to the archives department.
