In a move that underscores Sindh’s continued shift toward digital governance, the provincial government has announced that citizens will no longer be required to pay fees for the issuance of death certificates. The decision, approved during a cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah, marks another milestone in the province’s strategy to digitize civil records and modernize public service delivery through its Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) framework. The initiative aims to remove procedural and financial barriers while ensuring that vital life events are digitally recorded, accessible, and verifiable across government systems.
According to the official statement, the Sindh cabinet has abolished registration charges for death certificates at all administrative levels, including municipal committees, union councils, and town committees. This follows the government’s earlier move in 2024 to make birth registration free of cost, aligning with its broader objective to digitize citizen data management and integrate it with national systems operated by NADRA. Under the new arrangement, the Sindh government will bear the service costs previously collected by NADRA, allowing residents to obtain death certificates entirely free of charge. The decision is expected to enhance the province’s ability to maintain up-to-date demographic data, which supports better planning, resource allocation, and health policy development.
Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah emphasized that the reform is part of a wider collaboration with the United Nations and other international partners to strengthen Sindh’s CRVS infrastructure. The system, which captures life events such as births, deaths, and marriages, plays a critical role in national data integrity and contributes to more accurate statistics for policy decisions. By digitalizing and unifying these records, the province aims to eliminate duplication, reduce manual errors, and provide citizens with faster access to essential documents through electronic channels. The digital registry will also enable more efficient verification processes, helping institutions such as banks, insurance firms, and local administrations to authenticate identities securely and promptly.
Officials believe the step will further accelerate Sindh’s transition toward a comprehensive e-governance model, where essential services are delivered digitally with minimal human intervention. The cabinet’s decision also aligns with the government’s Digital Pakistan vision, which focuses on making government-to-citizen interactions more transparent, accessible, and data-driven. Through enhanced integration with NADRA’s systems, the Sindh government intends to move toward a single-window mechanism for civil registration, ensuring every life event—whether birth or death—is captured, validated, and stored within a unified digital database. This evolution in the CRVS framework represents a foundational shift in how provinces manage citizen records, supporting broader national efforts toward inclusive, technology-enabled governance.
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