The Central Electoral Board (JCE) opened a new service office at the Plaza Central shopping center, located on Av. Winston Churchill and Av. 27 Febrero in Santo Domingo. Civil Status certificates and identity cards can now be requested there. The Plaza Central offices are open Monday to Saturday from 10am to 9pm and on Sundays and holidays from 10am to 2pm.
The new center is part of efforts to improve services to the population. The initiative is part of the institution’s efforts to decentralize the JCE, streamline services and decongestion the offices.
The president of the JCE Plenary, Román Andrés Jáquez Liranzo says in a press release that the services of the JCE have never been so accessible as they are now. “This plenary has focused on the decentralization of the different services offered by the civil status offices,” he said.
The activity was attended by JCE members Rafael Armando Vallejo Santelises, Dolores Fernandez, Patricia Lorenza Paniagua and Samil Chami Isa, as well as alternate members, Prado Lopez and Fredy Angel Castro. The director of the Civil Registry, Rhina Díaz and the director of Cedulación, Américo Rodríguez were also present. The administrator of Plaza Central, Porfirio Rodríguez was the host for the shopping mall.
Jáquez Liranzo stressed the importance of decentralizing services. He said people can register births, marriages, divorces and deaths, but also receive certified copies of these civil acts.
Jáquez Liranzo said that other similar centers for issuing certificates and identification cards have been opened in the 360 and Sambil shopping malls. There is one at the main campus of the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo (UASD).
He said people are using the services. “In these few months, so that you notice the impact of the decongestion, more than 30,000 civil status documents have been issued in these three new offices. Only in Galería 360, in its first three months, 18,000 documents were issued; in Sambil, more than 7,000 and at the UASD, which is more recent, more than 4,000,” he pointed out.
Referring to the registrations carried out by the Civil Registries, he recalled that in the National Congress there is a bill that seeks to digitalize the national registry and make more records available online. “It never hurts to remind the citizens that the records are currently registered manually in two books,” he said.
“We reiterate our confidence that the National Congress in this legislature is going to provide the Dominican Republic with a reform to the Civil Registry as the Dominican people deserve,” he added.
“This will impact the JCE with more efficient services, the use of technology, digital signature and access and decentralization will be strengthened,” he insisted.
The president of the JCE spoke of plans for improved services at hospitals and clinics to eliminate under-registration. “This is a new project that will significantly eliminate under-registration, which are those people who are born or die and do not make timely declarations and this degenerates into late declarations and that the citizen must go to a civil court so that the JCE can accept this late declaration,” he explained.
He said that with the opening of JCE delegations in private clinics, the aim is that each boy or girl who is born in these hospitals leave the hospital with the birth certificate, and when a person dies, the family representative is immediately issued a registration of the death before the corpse leaves the hospital.
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JCE
1 September 2022