The Registrar, who was speaking at a staff durbar during a working visit to Ho, described the Registry as a critical element of administrative data collection, which policy planners and implementers relied on for informed development trend.

Rev. Addo noted that if well resourced, the Registry could provide timely and accurate data for identification and legal purposes among others, saying, the Registry was facing a myriad of problems, mainly, shortage of human resource to propel its mandate.

He said the country was facing developmental challenges because it had not developed ways of using “factual data”, and said it was time the Registry was given attention. Rev. Addo called on the staff to focus on the mission and vision of the Registry to make it a primary source of identification for all agencies in Ghana.

Mr John Yalmon Badengbanoya, Acting Volta Regional Director, Birth and Death Registry, said infant registration was ongoing in the Region and appealed for vehicles and motorbikes to get to hard-to-reach communities.

He said lack of vehicles and motorbikes was affecting the Region’s 70 per cent registration quota for the year, but expressed the hope that they would fill the gap by the close of the year.