Hyderabad: No technical efforts being made by GHMC to ease process

Hyderabad: Even after receiving numerous grievances related to technical issues being faced by the citizens for getting birth and death certificates, the IT department of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) is not making any technical efforts to ease the process.

Six months ago, the GHMC launched online birth and death certificate facility, but due to technical glitches in software, the website and mobile application are inaccessible and show warning 'the page not found and not responding'.

This is causing a delay of several months in issue of certificates to the citizens. People are unable to get them online. Daily about 30 people are visiting the GHMC zonal and circle offices; Their number visiting offices for certificates is also increasing as they are unable to apply online. Even after receiving a large number of complaints on inaccessibility to software of births and deaths, the GHMC IT wing has not yet addressed a single complaint.

Meanwhile, as applications seeking certificates are piling up, the GHMC introduced a new software for maintaining transparency in issue of certificates to avoid issue of duplicates. But the software is not helping the citizens. With no option left, they are falling prey to brokers for getting their certificates. The aim of this software was to avoid the issue of fake certificates, interference of the Assistant Medical Health Officers (AMOHs) and brokers, who charge huge amounts for providing certificates.

While the entire country follows a uniform policy by using the portal of the Office of the Registrar-General of India (ORGI) for registration of births and deaths, which is available free, the GHMC has adopted a separate route and issues certificates through a separate software.

Santosh Kumar of Koti applied for the birth certificate of his 5-year-old son. It has been more than three months. He has not received the certificate so far. "There are serious technical issues in the website; no proper clarity for procedure to be followed, The municipal corporation should ease the process of issuing births and deaths certificates. After facing several technical issues, I had registered a complaint asking to resolve the issue, but till now it has not been addressed by officials."

People complain that they are unable to use the software as it has several glitches and issues. Majority of citizen service centres have also stopped issuing certificates. People who are facing issues with the server are visiting GHMC circle, zonal and head offices.

Mohammed Ahmed, a social activist. said, "the GHMC births and deaths certificates website is inaccessible. More than 200 applications are pending with the corporation. There is no standard procedure for applying for certificates; the citizens have to suffer following a change in the process."