MIANWALI: A large number of students with their parents and civil society activists from Tarag and Isakhel towns took out a procession on Monday outside the Isakhel assistant commissioner (AC) office in protest at the lengthy procedure of late birth registration.

Protesters said at the time of filing admission forms with the Sargodha Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education, each student has to submit a Form-B issued by the National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra). Most of the parents never got registered the birth record of their child with their union council.

Without the union council certificate, Nadra does not issue Farm-B. Once they learnt about the required union council certificate and Farm-B, the parents said, they had to make several trips to union council offices for the certificate but in vain.

As per rules, the union council charges a fee for late registration cases. The applicant needs to obtain a permission letter from the health executive district officer (EDO). That letter needs to be verified by the radiologist at the district headquarters hospital, followed by the patwari of applicant’s native mauza, tehsildar and the AC.

Parents said often these officials were not found at their offices. Some parents said they were thinking to stop their children from going to school.

Haji Ehsan Ahmad Khan, president of the Unique Development Organisation of Tarag, said his body had conducted a survey in the Tarag Town to know about the number of children without birth registration certificates. He said 4,100 children were not registered with their union councils in Tarag.

He said his body with a Lahore NGO surveyed 10 union councils, which included Tarag, Daudkhel, Paikhel, Mari Indus, Kalabagh, Kot Chandna, Qamar Mushani, Wan-Bhachran, Harnoli and Union Council No 19 of the Mianwali city and found 26,000 children without birth registration.

Mr Ehsan added Tarag town had one high school each for boys and girls.

Ghulam Muhammad, of Tarag, told Dawn he was a daily wager and could not afford visiting offices for three weeks to get the birth registration certificates of his son and daughter.

Rab Nawaz, a donkey-cart operator, said he wanted to provide the best education to his children despite his meager earnings. He said he was unable to spend huge money and time on Form-B and birth registration of his children.

Said Rasool, a peasant, demanded the government arrange a hassle free procedure to for late birth registration cases or several children would have to leave the school.

Once the protesters explained their hardships to him, Isakhel AC Sheikh Ghulam Mustafa directed patwaris and the tehsildar to visit each union council every day to attest applications of late birth registration.

The EDO directed the deputy district health officer to sign the documents in Isakhel on his behalf to save the time of applicants.

Published in Dawn, September 16th , 2014