How do I chase up an overseas birth & death certificate order?

QWhile visiting Colombo, Sri Lanka in March 2020, I paid the required fee, for both a death and a birth certificate into the bank account of the

Sri Lanka Registrar Office. I then posted evidence of this bank deposit, together with accompanying certificate application forms, to the registrar office in Colombo. The death certificate is for Thomas William Hockly, who died on 29 January 1962. While the birth certificate is for his son.

Almost two years later, I am still waiting to receive these certificates, to be posted to Australia.

I have tried contacting the registrar office several times, as well as the Sri Lankan Archives, and National Library for assistance, but to no avail! I am wondering if this is a common occurrence, with other genealogists. I am looking for suggestions, as to what to do next, in order to obtain the certificates. Clyde Ashton

AAt the end of the day the sums involved tend to be small and is probably not worth the effort to recover them, if you don’t hear from the institution within a reasonable time.

However, it is worth contacting Mr Dharmapala Weerakkody, the acting High Commissioner for Sri Lanka in Canberra, to seek his guidance about how to resolve this matter. The High Commission’s address is 61 Hampton Circuit, Yarralumla, Canberra, ACT 2600; email: admin@slhcaust.org and website www.slhcaust.org.

The work of government departments around the world has been severely disrupted by the pandemic. British readers may be aware, for example, that it now takes up to eighteen months to receive service records from the Ministry of Defence, where once it took no longer than six weeks. Sri Lanka has been particularly badly hit by Covid. That said, the local Registrar General’s Department has recently introduced a online service to allow people to request certificates online in order, the website says, ‘To reduce the difficulties in requesting copies of certificates in the existing COVID pandemic situation’, so it may be worth checking this out. Details at https://familytr.ee/rgd

Note: If any readers have had similar experiences Clyde would be interested to hear from you. Please email helen.t@family-tree.co.uk and we will forward your correspondence.