due to the enactment on 7th October 1971 of the Legitimacy Ordinance, which amended the Births and Deaths Registration Ordinance by deleting from section 12 the proviso that every child of every Chinese male should be deemed to be legitimate for the purposes of the Births and Deaths Registration Ordinance. The repeal of this proviso thus places Chinese in the same position as non-Chinese as far as the registration of the birth of an illegitimate child is concerned.
Post-registration of Births
179. Owing to the absence of facilities for registration in the New Territories until 1932, very few births in the villages were registered before them. In that year facilities were provided for registration at various places in the New Territories, but a great many villagers still neglected to register the births of their children. Under modern condi- tions a birth certificate 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.
180. During 1972-73, 1,366 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
Total
•
934
12
10
164
56
190
432
...
1,366
This total represented a drop of 499 compared with the 1971-72 total of 1,865. At one time there used to be long waiting lists of applicants, but the substantial reduction in the number of applications since the peak of 7,124 in 1962-63 has enabled the registration teams to reduce delays to the minimum required for the process of verification, and by 31st March 1973 the total number of applications on the waiting list for all districts, urban and rural, was only 154. Of these 82 were in the urban area, and the remaining 72 in the New Territories.
181. Table XXXVII gives the number of births post-registered after one year from birth during the period 1945-57 and the years 1957-58
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