Sri Lankan social media users misled by digital birth certificate posts

"If you have babies born in 2021, 2022, 2023 go to your divisional secretariat office (pradeshiya lekam) and get this new birth certificate," read the Sinhala-language caption alongside an image of a birth certificate on Facebook on July 11, 2024. 

"This birth certificate will be used in future, therefore go with your old birth certificate and receive this by today or tomorrow," the post continued. 

Image

A screenshot of the false post captured on August 1, 2024.

Similar false claims were shared on Facebook here and here, and repeated in Tamil here and here.

Some social media users appeared misled by the posts, commenting to ask whether they could apply for a digital birth certificate for their child.

"My daughter was born in 2021. Can we get one for her?" one user wrote. 

"How about babies born in 2024?" another said.

Pilot scheme

A senior official in the Registrar General's Department of Sri Lanka said the programme is only being conducted in western Kalutara district due to "limited resources", but with plans to expand to the capital Colombo and northwest Puttalam town next (archived link).

"We have not stopped issuing the old birth certificates, which remain valid. We will only stop issuing old birth certificates when we come to a sustainable level with the new programme," the official told AFP.

The Registrar General's Department also issued a press release to clarify its birth certificate policy after the social media posts circulated online (archived link).

An official for the Kalutara Divisional Secretariat separately told AFP that the first digital birth certificate was issued on December 4, 2023.

"We issued the first digitalised birth certificate in December last year. It started with the Kalutara Divisional Secretariat in Kalutara district. Then other divisional secretariats in Kalutara district also started issuing these birth certificates. This was conducted as a pilot project. We issued these birth certificates to babies born after 2021."

The official added that "both the old and new birth certificates are valid".

Local media reports here, here and here also stated that the first digital birth certificates were issued in Kalutara in December 2023 (archived links here, here and here).