President Marcos has appealed for understanding over the need to physically appear in correcting clerical errors on birth certificates, stressing that the government is only avoiding fraudulent birth registration.

Marcos explained that there are processes in government—such as birth registration and clerical errors correction—that must be attended to physically in order to prevent fraudulent birth registration schemes, citing the case of former Bamban, Tarlac mayor Alice Guo.

"[K]ailangan natin intindihin na ang physical appearance sa ibang proseso ay hindi natin maisawalang-bahala para hindi tayo malusutan ng fraudulent birth registration (We need to understand that physical appearance, in some procedures, cannot simply be disregarded so that fraudulent birth registrations do not slip through)," Marcos said in his latest vlog on Sunday, March 8.

"Nakita naman ninyo ang nangyari kay Alice Guo at ‘yan exactly, ganiyan ang nangyari, fraudulent birth registration.  Ayaw natin naman masama sa ganiyan (You saw what happened with Alice Guo, and that is exactly what happened—a fraudulent birth registration. We certainly do not want to be involved in something like that)," Marcos stressed.

In the vlog, where Marcos responded to citizens' suggestions on government policies and which also served as a follow-up to his previous vlog seeking for recommendations from the public, Marcos acknowledged that going through the rigorous and highly inconvenient way to correct clerical errors on birth certificates was indeed "quite difficult."

Bong Dalo, one of the citizens who sent in their recommendations to the President, suggested to make the process of correcting a birth certificate easier, citing that what the government currently does is to correct misspelled names one letter at a time, and require the person or representative to first make a request to their local municipality.

He recommended to the President to allow the correction of the misspelled name or wrong birthdate all at once.

"Kung late registered naman ay papupuntahin ka pa kung saan ka naipanganak. Nandito ako Luzon tapos doon ako pinanganak sa Mindanao, ang layo naman. Magkano pa ang gastusin, kawawa naman ang tao (If the birth was late registered, they even require you to go to the place where you were born. I’m here in Luzon, but I was born in Mindanao, that’s very far. It also costs a lot of money to travel there. It’s really hard on ordinary people)," Dalo said in his comment.

"Ay mukha talagang pahirapan ito (It really seems like this is quite difficult)," Marcos responded.

The President added that it should already be among the services included in the eGov mobile application.

"Sa tingin ko, sa mga nagagawa na ating improvement gamit ang eGov at internet, dapat ay isa na ito sa mga serbisyong hindi na natin inaalala. Napaka-basic naman niyan at ilang oras ang kakainin sa inyong araw para lang pilahan ang iisang dokumento (In my view, with the improvements we have already achieved through eGov and the internet, this should already be one of the services we no longer have to worry about. It is very basic, yet it can take several hours out of your day just to line up for a single document)," he added.

Marcos also underscored that if someone requests a physical copy of birth certificate, it should be possible to pick it up from any Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) branch.

He further said that digital documents should already be recognized and accepted by all offices in the country, adding that every government office should acknowledge them so that the service will truly be useful.

"We need to be open in integrating so our digitization program can succeed," Marcos said.

A Filipino citizen also brought up the perennial issue in obtaining IDs, which mostly requires presenting another government ID.

According to Marcos, the PSA stands ready to help citizens, who do not have valid IDs, in securing documents such as national ID and birth certificate.

"Pinadali na rin ng PSA ang proseso ng pagkuha ng national ID. Tinatanggap na po ng PSA ang kahit na anong dokumento na may pangalan, araw ng kapanganakan, address, litrato, o lagda, o thumbmark katulad po ng Barangay Clearance (The PSA has also made the process of obtaining a national ID easier. The PSA now accepts any document that contains a person’s name, date of birth, address, photo, signature, or thumbmark, such as a Barangay Clearance)," Marcos said.

"Kaya PSA, padaliin niyo na, pabilisin niyo na (So PSA, please make it easier and speed up the process)," Marcos added.