Health dept to start enrolling kids for Aadhaar at all its centres

JALANDHAR: The Punjab health department will start enrolling children for Aadhaar certification in all government health centres of the state, to provide them 12- digit unique identity number, just after the child’s birth.

The community and primary health centres will be provided with a tablet and trained staff to carry out the enrolment. For generating the unique number, the hospital will get the child’s photograph and biometric detail of one of its parents.

Last month, this service was launched by the health department in civil hospitals across the state and about 12, 000 children have already been enrolled with Aadhaar right after the birth. Tablets along with power banks and SIM cards were given to 200 officials who have passed the Aadhaar exam earlier.

A special training was given to the employees before starting the services in government hospitals. But few officials skipped the meeting. Sources said that director, health and family welfare Dr Rajiv Bhalla has taken a serious view about the officials who were absent in this exam. An explanation is being called from the candidates who have remained absent or failed in the exam.

Officials said that the enrolment of children immediately after the birth is to ensure better delivery of entitlements and services under the Integrated Child Development Scheme and gov- ernment-run programmes.

“The sufficient numbers of tablets were distrusted among the trained staff to start this Aadhaar Linked Birth Registration (ALBR) project. We have already started this service in government hospitals and CHC centres will be launched soon,” Dr Bhalla said. He said that department is also holding a review meeting on December 19, to review the project’s progress with the civil surgeons.

In recent directions, civil surgeons have been asked to maintain a proper record of these tablets, SIM cards and chargers in a stock register. While, tablets should exclusively be used for generating EID/Aadhaar number of the children born in government hospitals.