Corporation’s online death certificate facility comatose

The Chennai Corporation has streamlined the issuance of birth certificates and one can now download the certificate from the Corporation website without any hitch, However, the case is very different when it comes to death certificates. Though Corporation has a clarity on whom to approach for availing of the facility, some officials are making people run around, instead of guiding the applicant. Recently, a family from Valasarawalkam suffered greatly, merely to identify the appropriate area office to file their application. 

The applicant, an NRI, who needed the death certificate of her mother Prema V, before returning to the US, first approached the Corporation of Chennai. After asking for the details about her place of death and place of cremation, she was directed to approach the Corporation Zone 10 office at Kodambakkam by the Corporation authorities. The family then went to Zone 10 office as Prema V had died at a hospital in Ashok Nagar and was cremated at the Corporation crematorium at Nesapakkam. Ideally, as per the existing rules, zone 10 office should have accepted their application and issued the certificate. However, the officials told the applicant that she could not apply for death certificate at their office and directed her to approach the respective division where the woman originally lived. Prema had a house at Tirumullaivoyal and the officials directed the applicant to approach Ambattur Municipality office. Once the applicant went there, she was asked to approach Avadi Municipality. 

When DTNext contacted Mayor Saidai Duraisamy, he said, “This was completely unwanted. The zone 10 official should have accepted the application and issued the certificate,” he said. He, however, said that death certificates have not been brought to the centralised server so far as there has been a delay in uploading details of the dead. “In case of birth certificates, hospitals are updating the details to the Corporation website regularly and there is no delay. However, in the case of deaths, an efficient system is not yet in place,” Duraisamy admitted.