Team Herald
MARGAO: All efforts made by people to reconstruct their missing birth and marriage certificates in the office of the Sub-Registrar have gone in vain as the reconstructed documents are not uploaded and hence cannot be accessed over the net.
Given the fact that there is a clamour by Goans to get their birth and marriage certificates in order to apply for Portuguese passport there is an increasing number of people applying for reconstruction of documents as these records in the Sub-Registrar’s office are destroyed.
In fact the Sub-Registrar even issues a certificate stating that the document is not available in their records and to get over this the government has come up with the exercise of reconstruction of document wherein a fresh document is prepared after the applicant proves his date of birth or marriage based on either photocopies of earlier document or any other document.
However, the reconstructed document is not uploaded on the web site and hence serves no purpose as in the case of those applying for Portuguese passport, the Portuguese officials check the documents online and if the document is not uploaded they cannot access it and hence the application stands to be rejected.
Records from 1914 to 1970 are not available at the Sub-Registrar’s office at Matanhy Saldanha Administrative Complex and mostly those born in the 60s are getting their documents reconstructed to apply for the Portuguese passport either for themselves or their children.
Since the reconstruction of document exercise started in October 2018, the Sub-Registrar’s Office at Margao has received 33 applications to reconstruct marriage certificate of which six have been reconstructed while of the 152 applications received to reconstruct birth certificates only three have been approved.
“Once we clear the application it goes to the District Registrar and then to the State Registrar and that is why the whole process takes time,” said Sub-Registrar Domingos Martins who also said it was for the Planning and Statistics Department to upload the reconstructed document.
