order of the dates of application except where a certificate is urgently required for a special purpose.
162. A fee of $10 is payable for post-registration more than a year after the date of birth, and stamp duty of $3 is payable on each supporting statutory declaration. In the course of the year the three teams collected a total of $25,782 in respect of stamp duty on such declarations.
163. During 1963-64 6,475 births were post-registered more than one year after the date of birth, as follows:
Hong Kong, Kowloon and New Kowloon
New Territories
Islands District
Sai Kung District...
Tai Po District
Tsuen Wan District
Yuen Long District
:
·
+++
1,694
306
++
525
2,796
155
999
...
...
4,781
6,475
This total represented a decrease of 649 on the 1962-3 total, fewer applications having been received in the Yuen Long, Sai Kung and Islands Districts. In 3,357 cases the applicants failed to keep their ap- pointments for interviews or failed to produce the required evidence, with the result that the applications had to be either held pending or treated as withdrawn. By 31st March 1964 the total number of appli- cations on the waiting list for all urban and rural districts had been reduced to 1,645 as compared with 3,810 outstanding on 31st March 1963. Of the 1,645 outstanding applications, 1,285 were for Tai Po District.
164. Table XXXII gives the number of births post-registered after one year from birth during the years 1945-46 to 1963-64, and Table XXXIII the 1963-64 numbers in each age group by sexes. The latter shows that of the 6,475 post-registrations 2,927 were in respect of males and 3,548 in respect of females, and also that 4,853 were in respect of persons under 20 years of age. The preponderance of females appears to indicate that more care was taken at the time of birth to register males than females. The age group with the highest number of post-registration, was the 10-14 group, reflecting the demand for birth certificates for school purposes.
165. The 1,694 births post-registered after one year at the urban district Registries were partly in respect of cases where the parents had
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