Port Loko — Combined efforts to ensure the provision of birth registration certificates to children from one to eighteen years has commenced in the northern district of Port Loko.

The two-week exercise sponsored by UN child agency, UNICEF and the government of Sierra Leone followed a two-day training and sensitisation workshop at the new district council conference hall in the township.

The campaign started with a float parade in all the eleven chiefdoms of the district before chief administrator Mohamed Sheik Kargbo addressed a gathering at the Court Barrie on the need for birth certificates.

He disclosed that many people have lived and died without either a birth or death certificate.

He observed that about 90 per cent of city dwellers and 95 percent of villagers do not have birth certificates.

Kargbo said the refusal by parents to register their children after birth was an act of injustice and therefore urged parents, religious leaders, unions and associations to go out and preach the message on the need for children to be registered after birth.

Meanwhile, district medical officer in Port Loko Dr Victor Pratt Lebbie stressed on the need for the country's health sector to continue working with other agencies.

Apart from the fact that birth certificate gives the child the right to nationality, family, school, passport, employment, to vote and be voted for, he said it was also important for record keeping, usually to assess the Human Development index of a country.

Dr. Lebbie said the unavailability of accurate records, makes it difficult for the country to be well accessed.

"A child with a birth certificate stands protected from violence, exploitation, early marriage, child labour and police arrest," he said.

Dr. Lebbie, while urging parents to register their children since the exercise was free, said birth registration can also protect the child from being recruited in the military and police service before the required age.

A short play titled "my birth certificate" performed by the kids formed the high point of the ceremony.

Births and deaths registrar in the district Tejan Kamara and coordinator of the current exercise said the population of Port Loko is 478,782, half of which is children between the age of 1 and eighteen.

Kamara said, 197 personnel have been dispatched to 92 peripheral health centres for the exercise.