THE REGISTRAR General's Department (RGD) has started its first non-cash office at 31 Half-Way Tree Road in Kingston to serve persons in the Corporate Area.
As part of its continuing thrust to decentralise its services, the RGD is expanding the services to Kingston where applications for birth, death and marriage certificates will be accepted.
The Half-Way Tree branch will open its doors from 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. daily.
Dawn Douglas, Deputy Chief Executive Officer and Director of Operations at the RGD, says customers will be able to apply for birth, death and marriage certificates and record updating services, among others, at the Half-Way Tree location, which previously served only as a Local District Registrar's office that facilitated birth and death registration.
"Persons who have either visited the location or called, have wanted to make applications for births, deaths and marriages, so we are responding to that demand now," she explained, adding that the RGD was committed to bring accessible to customers and making sure they were satisfied.
Mrs. Douglas said that the development of the branch was part of the modernisation process to bring the Local District Registrars (representatives of the RGD) together in clusters. Registration services previously available at the Hagley Park Health Centre and Little Kew Road; will be integrated at this branch.
The branch, she explained, would operate similarly to the regional offices located in Montego Bay, St. James; Mandeville, Manchester, and St. Ann's Bay, St. Ann.
The Deputy CEO noted that the most important feature of the Half-Way Tree branch was that it would be a non-cash facility. Customers, she said, would be required to transact business using any of the following non-cash payments - credit and debit cards, manager's cheques and postal and money orders.
Mrs. Douglas said that research showed that the office "would be better off being a non-cash branch", and that a number of customers "do not necessarily wish to operate using cash".
