adminTHE Registrar General Mr Tobaiwa Mudede has renewed his calls for people to use traditional methods of contraception saying he was worried about the lack of population growth for the past 10 years that has created a serious generation gap.
To that effect he and Mr Richard Hondo will be launching a book on the controversial matter soon.
In an interview with Sunday News at the Registrar-General department’s stand at the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair (ZITF) on Wednesday, Mr Mudede said his office had noted with concern that there had not been any meaningful population growth in the country for the past 10 years.
He urged people to revert to the traditional methods of contraception such as the menstrual cycle and the withdrawal methods that he said had no long-term effects on couples.
He said such methods were quick and more effective if a couple decided on having children than the modern methods of contraception.
“What I am saying is that Zimbabwe needs more children. There has not been any meaningful population growth 10 years going back and what this means is that there is a serious problem of generation gap.
“People seem to be comfortable following birth trends of more developed countries and having only one or two children but more children are needed in this country so that the generation gap does not continue to widen.
“Instead of using modern birth control methods people can resort to natural methods such as menstrual cycle and the withdrawal method. They can also use safe condoms that are well packaged and are sold in the pharmacies,” said Mr Mudede.
He said people should be wary of contraceptive tools that are not recommended and some that flood the local market while they have been banned in countries of manufacture.
Mr Mudede said he was working on a book on the matter with Mr Hondo which will be launched very soon.
His verve on the issue was however dented after he was criticised by some sections of the health ministry for trying to derail the progress that they were making to have the buy-in of the population on various contraceptive methods and the country’s fight against HIV/Aids.
On developments in the issuance of documents, Mr Mudede said digitalisation brought with it a lot of improvements in the time of issuance of national documents such as birth certificates, death certificates, identity documents and passports. He said the minimum issuing time of the biometric identity card if a person had all the requisite documents was at least five minutes and a maximum of eight minutes while an ordinary passport that used to be 120 working days was now issued in 20 working days.
“The department has 10 provincial offices, 72 district offices and 206 sub-offices. The issuance of polythene/synthetic identity document has been decentralised to provincial and district offices countrywide to facilitate accessibility by members of the public.
“A child can now be allocated an ID number at birth. It is the number that will appear on the identity card on attainment of 16 years and will also appear on other vital civil documents,” he said.
Mr Mudede said they had also adopted the queue management system to enhance service delivery to the public in line with the Zim Asset’s drive of improving service delivery through computerisation of the department.
He added that it was through the computerisation of the Gegistrar General’s department that people were now receiving messages on their phones informing them that their passports were ready for collection, something that had made congestion a thing of the past at the Central Registry.
He also stated that it was his wish to have the number of days an ordinary passport takes further reduced but hinted that since it was a high security document it was not possible since a lot of processes and offices were involved.
Mr Mudede said his department worked very hard and the backlog in the issuance of documents that used to be a splitting headache matter was now history.
Online Reporter