The Minister of National Security and the Chief Immigration Officer would seem to be breaching the constitutional and inalienable rights of some citizens by refusing them passports because they were born out of wedlock and because their birth certificates do not show their names.
During the colonial era when a child was born out of wedlock and his birth reported to the district registrar, he/she recorded the child's mother's name, the name of the informant and the birth as illegitimate.
For the purposes of identifying the birth of such a person with the relevant birth certificate, it became necessary for someone with knowledge of the child's birth to swear to an affidavit identifying the birth certificate as being that of the person in question. Such a birth certificate has always been accepted for all the purposes and also for the purpose of the issuing of a passport by the Immigration Department.
However, a person holding such a birth certificate is now being refused a passport. He is now not only being required to obtain an electronic birth certificate but also to have a new affidavit in support of it, notwithstanding the fact that the electronic birth certificate is a replica of the handwritten certificate on the records in the Registrar General's Department.
Now if this is not absurdity then what is? A person 65 years and over finds it difficult if not impossible to locate a person who could swear to another affidavit identifying him as being one and the same person referred to on the electronic birth certificate.
However, the Minister of National Security and the Chief Immigration Officer have been refusing to issue to such people new passports, although they are the holders of valid passports issued by the Immigration Department on the basis of hand-written birth certificates.
It is clear that the minister and the Chief Immigration Officer are violating the fundamental rights of such people but no one in our Parliament seems to be con-cerned with the rights of the individual.
It would seem that the only course open to these people is to go to the courts for an order that they are citizens of this country and are accordingly entitled as of right to a passport on the basis of the affidavit to the handwritten certificate.
Would any member of Parliament or leader of any political party have an interest in such a matter of public importance and come forward and pursue this matter?