AG Breaks Down Rejected Applications at Vital Stats Unit

Michael Peyrefitte

While attorneys were at court on the interim injunction, Attorney General Michael Peyrefitte, who has oversight of the Vital Statistics Unit, was holding a press conference at the Biltmore Plaza.  Ahead of the May eighth I.C.J. referendum, the A.G. says that there are over a thousand individuals whose applications were rejected by the Vital Stats Unit, including ninety-three Guatemalan nationals who were attempting to seek Belizean nationality through this process.  This afternoon, the A.G. gave a breakdown of applicants who were ineligible based on records not being found anywhere in their system.

Michael Peyrefitte, Attorney General

“One thousand, two hundred and twenty-nine.  There was six hundred and eleven were rejected between July 2018 and October 2018.  Six hundred and ninety-two since November 2018 to April 2019.  Most of them they were not found, their records were not found anywhere, not in the book, not in the blotter, not in the computer system.  All of those people, we told them, “Look, you can still do a late registration if you want.”  Some of them just get ignorant, cuss up the people eena di office and seh all kinds of things and never returned.  How can we help those people?  And then you have some people who would be rejected, the number is actually more than this in this sense.  We reject people and we say what do we need to do?  We say, listen, you go, bring this information and if you can bring me a series of information, a high school record, a baptismal certificate or something, we are going to help you, and many people come back like that and we issued them their birth paper.  But of this twelve, twenty-nine about ninety-three of them were just stone cold Guatemalans trying to get a Belizean birth paper.”