Minister suspends creation of secondary civil status centres.

The ongoing census, the minister said, seeks to obtain reliable data on the number of secondary civil status centres operating in every council area.

He said the census will also help authorities know the number of non-functional secondary civil registry centres at present.

The census, the member of government added, equally aims at obtaining information on civil registrars and secretaries; the distances separating the main civil registry centres from the secondary; the distances separating one secondary civil registry centre from another; the population density per community and more.

Data collected from the census, Minister Elanga Obam said, will enable the Ministry of Decentralisation and Local Development have a better guide for the creation of future secondary civil registry centres.

He said the census will also help them be able to identify priority areas. The aim here, Minister Elanga Obam said, seeks to boost birth registration throughout the country.

The suspension, he concluded, will be lifted as soon as the results of the census are available.

Recalled that few months ago, Minister Elanga Obam in a press conference had disclosed that nearly seven million Cameroonians were without birth certificates in the country.

The figure, the minister said, during the presser followed an observation that for over a decade, not only has the rate of birth registration remained stagnant, but has also been in a decline in some regions despite efofrts by government and its technical and financial partners. 

Minister Elanga Obam, however, lamented that the majority of these citizens are children, including over 1.5 million primary and nursery school pupils.