LAW, ORDER AND RECORDS
223
The Marriage Ordinance does not apply to non-Christian customary marriages duly celebrated according to the personal law and religion of the parties, and such marriages do not require to be registered. Consequently no statistics of such marriages are available, but it is thought that despite the growing popularity of registry marriages there are still as many unregistered marriages as there are registered ones. The position regarding unregistered marriages is far from satisfactory. The great majority are of doubt- ful validity, since they are contracted not in accordance with the full traditional forms prescribed by Chinese custom but in sup- posed conformity with the pre-war civil code of China. This un- satisfactory situation and the best means of remedying it are under active consideration in the light of comments and representations made by various bodies and individuals following a report by the Attorney General and the Secretary for Chinese Affairs published during the preceding year.
Births and Deaths. The registration of births and deaths is compulsory under the Births and Deaths Registration Ordinance. The General Register Office, at which all records of births and deaths are kept, is on the second floor of Li Po Chun Chambers, Connaught Road Central. Facilities for registration are also pro- vided at 17 district registries. Ten of these are on Hong Kong Island, four in Kowloon, and three in the New Territories. During the year two new full-time registries were opened at Yuen Long and Tai Po. In the outlying areas and islands, births are registered at the local rural committee offices by district registrars during regular visits, and deaths at local police stations.
The ordinance provides for the post-registration of births which have not been registered within one year after the date of birth. Most of these post-registration cases concern adults and older children in the New Territories, where facilities for registration were not available until 1932. Since a birth certificate is essential for such purposes as school enrolment or obtaining a passport to go overseas for employment, thousands of applications for the post- registration of births are now being received, mostly from people in the New Territories. To deal with these, three mobile post- registration teams are operating in outlying villages.
The Births and Deaths Registry compiles the Colony's vital statistics. These include birth and death rates and statistics of
Page 270Page 271