BACOLOD CITY – Fifteen thousand individuals here have no birth certificates and the Civil Registrar’s Office is eyeing to register them.
Hermilo Pa-oyon, city civil registrar, said that they were among the more than 19,000 individuals who have submitted their documents for verification based on their record.
Pa-oyon said that there are some individuals who were not born in this city but were here at the time of the survey.
To address this, Pa-oyon said that they are focusing on their mobile birth registration in barangays to ensure that all the people here will have copies of their birth certificates in local and security paper.
Pa-oyon stressed that a birth certificate is important because it is the mother of all personal documents. Records in school, marriage, travel, government transactions, and identification cards, among others, emanate from a birth certificate, he said.
At least 1,500 individuals have registered here through the mobile birth registration which is part of the Birth Registration Assistance Project (BRAP) of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
Pa-oyon said that acquiring a birth certificate through BRAP is free. Once processed through BRAP, birth certificates are expected to be released within three months, as these are being prioritized, he added.
For those interested to avail, Pa-oyon said they could visit their office at the Bacolod City Government Center (BCGC) and that their staff will be assist them with the process.