GRO moving to digitalise all certificates

As the government continues to take advantage of the technology that is being developed every day, Guyana’s General Register Office, through the Ministry of Home Affairs, will soon be digitalising all types of certificates that are issued by the agency.

Although the agency has already developed a database for certain documents, it is currently in the processing of digitalising marriages and deaths certificate.

During a press conference on Wednesday at the ministry, Minister of Home Affairs, Robeson Benn said that this move will allow the information of citizens to be more secured.

“I think fundamentally the basic interest of the government and to extension the ministry is to have a more efficient process, one that is more responsive to the needs of our citizens and to ensure that we do not have situations where people make repeated attempts to get certain documents,” the minister stated.

He said with one transaction, every information needed on a citizen will be available, instead of them having to run-around to the agency more than once.

Additionally, Registrar General of the GRO, Raymon Cummings noted that what ever information is presented on the agency’s database about a person will remain as that at all times. It will not change.

This, he said, decreases the chance of persons making multiple mistakes.

“The documents are scanned and a database with all the information is created…So, it removes that chance of error when persons writing. In terms of technology, we have secured printers. The security feature on the certificate that is known by the person who is required to know them will be printed on the printer at the time when the certificate is printed. So, your document will be printed on a printer from the database,” Cummings explained.

The Registrar General further noted that as the agency moves forward to do this with the marriages and deaths certificates, they are in the process of cross-checking to make sure that every info on the database is precisely correct.

Meanwhile, Deputy Registrar General, Visham Budhoo stressed the importance of Guyana becoming technological savvy in these modern times.

 “Those certificates will be more secure as it will have more security features. We also would not like to be left behind. We want to move to technology as the world is going that direction,” Budhoo posited.

This technological advanced initiative will also save persons from the many paper-work documentation and it will help the agency to be always organised.