TACLOBAN CITY, Feb. 24 (PNA) — Department of Social and Development Secretary Corazon “Dinky” Soliman vowed to lobby for a more affordable cost of processing late registration and correction of entry for vital records of poor families.
Soliman said that the Php3,000 to Php8,000 expense for correction of entry in civil registration records and hundreds of pesos for late registration are not affordable for poor families.
“We need to talk to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) to check what we can do for the very poor families. If this is the price, people will not correct any wrong information in their records or not register at all,” Soliman told reporters on the sidelines of a conference with civil registrars here Monday afternoon.
The DSWD has shouldered the cost of printing of 37,500 certificates of live birth in security paper (SECPA) for poor super typhoon Yolanda survivors 18 years old and below. On Monday, the DSWD released 2,100 copies of records in SECPA for beneficiaries in this city.
The agency have been strongly advocating for civil registration among poor families for them to be able to access government programs such as the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program.
“If you don’t have a birth certificate, you do not get a death certificate. Even if you live 60 years in this world, you’re not recognized. We are also supporting this project so that each child will be recognized and each child will be known,” Soliman said.
The Mobile Civil Registration Project (MCRP) in areas pummeled by super typhoon Yolanda is being led by non-government organization Initiatives for Dialogue and Empowerment through Alternative Legal Services (IDEALS).
The project is funded by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugee in the first phase and by the United Nations Children’s Fund and United Nations Development Programme in the second phase.
The DSWD has been supporting the project after finding out that many beneficiaries of anti-poverty projects have lost their proof of their legal identity due to Yolanda’s strong winds and storm surges.
IDEALS executive director Edgardo Ligon said 120,000 Yolanda survivors who lost or have no vital records have been assisted through MCRP and they are currently working on processing another 120,000 who are mostly children of poor families.
“Typhoon survivors don’t just need food and shelter, but legal identity as well. In fact, they will be denied to access post-disaster assistance if they don’t have identity records,” Ligon added. (PNA)