ILOILO CITY – The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD)-Region 6 has urged parents in Western Visayas to avail of amnesty if they falsified or tampered the birth certificates of their children.
THE Regional Alternative Child Care Office (RACCO)-6 conducts a forum in Iloilo City on a new law that provides amnesty for parents who falsified or tampered birth certificates of their children. (Tara Yap)
The DSWD-Regional Alternative Child Care Office (RACCO)-6 has been reminding parents that they can correct the falsification or tampering as stipulated in Republic Act No. 11222 or the Simulated Birth Rectification Act of 2019.
Jeannie Lyn Casiple, social officer of RACCO-6, said parents can still avail of the government’s 10-year amnesty program that ends in 2029.
The falsification or tampering of birth certificates usually occurs for cases of unregulated adoption.
“With less than six years left, they should avail it,” Casiple said.
The amnesty is part of the law that makes legal adoption an administrative process rather than a judicial process.
RACCO-6 has approved 15 out of the 18 petitions for amnesty. Three petitions are currently pending.
In a recent forum, an adoptive mother from Nueva Valencia, Guimaras shared the process she and her husband took to correct the birth certificate of her adoptive daughter.
Mabel Ganancial said that by correcting the birth certificate, their adoptive daughter can enjoy the same legal rights and privileges in a similar way to their other child.