Registrar-Generals-Department-Annual-report-1962-1963 — Page 44

has, at least for the young, become practically essential, and for many years past there has been a constant flow of applications to post-register births in the New Territories. To deal with these, three mobile teams have been operating throughout the year, visiting outlying villages according to a regular programme and dealing with cases in order of the dates of application except where a certificate is urgently required for a special purpose.

114. 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 support- ing statutory declaration. In the course of the year the three teams collected a total of $25,272 in respect of stamp duty on such declara- tions.

115. During 1962-63 a record total of 7,124 births were post- registered more than one year after the date of birth, as follows:

Hong Kong, Kowloon and New Kowloon

New Territories

Yuen Long District

Tai Po District

Sai Kung and Islands Districts

Tsuen Wan District

...

1,404

1,795

2,488

1,262

175

5,720

7,124

This total represented an increase of 1,550 on the 1961-62 total, and may be attributed to the improved facilities provided in the New Territories and in particular the establishment of the new Registry in Yuen Long as mentioned earlier. The number of registrations does not however fully reflect the work involved on post registrations. There were in fact 2,640 cases in which the applicants failed to keep their appointments for interviews or failed to produce the required evidence, with the result that the applications had thus either to be held pending or considered to have been withdrawn. By the end of the year all applications in the two major districts of Yuen Long and Tsuen Wan had been cleared, and the total number of applications on the waiting list for all urban and rural districts had been reduced to 3,810 as compared with 8,581 outstanding on 31st March 1962. Table XXVII gives the number of births post-registered during the years 1945-46 to 1962-63, and Table XXVIII the 1962-63 numbers in each age group by sexes. The latter shows that of the 7,124 post-registrations 4,004 were in respect of males and 3,120 in respect of females, and also that 5,049

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