City, PSA eyes increase in civil registration in marginalized communities

The Cordillera office of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA-CAR) and the local government will be forging a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) in line with the project Philsys Birth Registration Assistance Project for the city.        

Local Civil Registrar Luz Perez stated that the program aims to increase civil registration in marginalized communities, particularly those belonging to the Indigenous Peoples (IPs) and the poorest sector.

Among the goals and objectives of the aforesaid project is to enhance for a more intensified campaign in improving civil registration aligned with the 3 goals of the civil registration and vital statistics decade which are universal civil registration of births, deaths and other vital events, all individuals with legal documentation to claim identity, civil status, and ensuring rights and accurate, complete, and timely vital registration produced and disseminated; to register those unregistered births and other civil registry documents, especially  IPs and the poorest sector covering all the cities and municipalities in the province; verify from the PSA civil registry system database the existence of birth and other civil registry records to avoid double or multiple registration through omnibus registration; implement the Philippine Registry Information system in the conduct of mobile registration in the city for a period of one year from the data of MOA signing and register the Phil ID of the birth registrants.

“We are targeting to conduct mobile registration starting this third quarter of this year. We will be in close coordination with the barangays in carrying out this project,” Perez stressed.      

She pointed out that the local government can still do better and so efforts continue to strengthen the country’s civil registration and vital statistics systems and meet the goal of universal registration by 2024, that at least 99.5 percent of all Filipinos should have their birth registered and shall be provided with the legal documentation through the issuance of the birth certificate. – Dexter A. See