New Civil Registration Number To Strengthen Social Security Welfare Planning

PM Encourages Diaspora’s Help in Economic Recovery

The new Civil Registration Number (CRN) developed by the Registrar General’s Department (RGD) is expected to improve planning for social security and welfare programmes.

Chief Executive Officer at the RGD, Charlton McFarlane, says the unique CRN will identify persons through their life course, therefore being applied to the RGD’s Electronic Birth database it will link vital life events such as birth, marriage, and death.

McFarlane says, being able to identify these events from the civil registry will aid in the tightening up of RGD’s social obligations to the Jamaican citizens and allow for greater efficiency.

“I believe the Government will definitely benefit by the fact that they will now be able to have a better idea of the population for which they are planning… especially around the age of retirement. We spend a lot of resources through the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) and the Accountant General on pension funds,” Mr. McFarlane added.

He also said, because there is no explicit link, at times the RGD relies on life certificates to say that somebody is still alive. He assures that once this link is complete with services such as Genealogy Research that the RGD now offers, then government institutions can easily connect to the systems and have the necessary information verified immediately.

Meanwhile, roughly 70 per cent of the RGD’s services are now available online, and the agency continues to look at additional services that can be provided on its online platform.

Mr. McFarlane says, The RGD is looking to expand the options for same-day and next-day services as currently, only customers who would have already been issued a computer-generated certificate can do so. He added that with having the records existing in digital format, the RGD is currently working to include these in the same-day and next-day service delivery offerings.