Children without birth certificates

Reading through the digest of the recently introduced Births, Deaths , Marriages and Relationships Registration Bill I came across this;

Currently there are around 6,000 births that have not been registered within 1 year of the birth.

You may well ask, If they haven't been registered how can authorities know this?

The Bill enables the Register-General to obtain address information for a child's mother from the Ministry of Social Development.

Aha. One can only assume then that a mother can get a benefit without a birth certificate to even prove the baby is her's. The DPB application pamphlet says, You need to bring along a full birth certificate for each child but exceptions are clearly being made.

I can understand there are circumstances whereby the mother does not want to or can't register the father's name on a birth certificate but these babies aren't even having their mother's name registered.

How does one go through life without any proof of identity? Perhaps their mothers 'get around to it' but the whole business seems incredibly lax.

New software system for Work and Income

Given the biggest group of beneficiary clients are now sickness and invalid beneficiaries the name of the new client management software system being phased in from July 2007 at a cost of $54 million seems entirely appropriate but somewhat optimistic.

I hope this doesn't mean another loss of data, as happened when systems changed in 1993.

Better off on a benefit

A front page story from the DomPost is headlined, "Agency tells worker she is better off on benefit."

Her ex-employer has obviously gone to the press, appalled by this. Because she was a good worker he had increased her pay from $10-25 an hour to $11-50 giving her a maximum weekly income of $402-50 plus the accommodation benefit. She told the press she wanted to spend more time with her child and that WINZ told her she would be better off if she left the job. She was also having trouble getting babysitters.

"I want to enjoy being with my baby while she is so young - I won't be able to have that experience again."

Well neither will all those mothers who go back to work so she can stay home. That's the crux of the matter. Those who don't plan and don't mind taking welfare get subbed by others prepared to take responsibility for their choices.

Not to mention the employer loses a good worker. She plans to return to work eventually. Let's hope so. Not working is fairly habit-forming.

As for WINZ, I've heard this before. Most recently when the mother of a boy turning 18 was told he would be better off on the dole than working part-time at Burger King (while also attending a course). She was about to lose his family support payment and he didn't earn enough to give her the equivalent. Fortunately she rejected the idea and so did the boy, preferring to earn his own money.