CLRC reviewing, update Civil Registry Act

The Constitutional and Law Reform Commission (CLRC) with assistance from Bloomberg Data for Health Initiative has commenced the review of the Civil Registry Act.
CLRC Secretary Dr Eric Kwa said it was the Government’s initiative to review the act which involved the Office of the Civil Registry and National Identity.
He said the Civil Registration Act was a colonial law with only one minor amendment carried out in 2014 to introduce the national identification programme.
Kwa said Registrar-General Dickson Kiragi had requested that the whole act be reviewed because the law was introduced in 1962.
“Through Bloomberg, we have brought the civil registrar of New Zealand into the country and did a desktop study on the Act and found a lot of gaps,” Kwa said.
“The key recommendation was for the Civil Registration Act to be updated. So, lawyers have looked at it and there is a general consensus that we need to update the law to make it relevant.
“We are living in a globalised world so we exchange data between deferent countries. So if you are going to register someone here and we have close relationships with New Zealand and Australia we have to find out if they allow dual citizenship. Our law must also be updated to cater for that.
“We are hosting Apec next year.  What if the leaders agreed that people within the Apec countries can move around freely, how do we manage those numbers?
“We are hoping that Bloomberg can help sort this issue. We always consult our stakeholders on all the laws we review so in order to bring them we need funds to organise a place to talk about those issues.
“Bloomberg has agreed to help us run those meetings so we get all the stakeholders’ views and we can now progress to the new legislation.
“Unicef will also assist with the review on the Civil Registration Act so we have asked the two partners to work with us to avoid duplication and wastage of resources.”