Pangilinan: Job applicants to save money in lifetime validity of NSO-released birth certificate

SENATOR Francis "Kiko" Pangilinan on Monday expressed his gratitude to his fellow senators for their support in the passage of Senate Bill 2450, which he principally authored, providing the Permanent Validity of the Certificates of Live Birth, Death, and Marriage Act.

"As a principal author of this measure, we'd like to thank the sponsor Senator [Bong] Revilla for seeing the measure through. We'd like to thank our colleagues for their support of this measure," Pangilinan said during the Senate session today.

The bill, which received a 21-0 vote from the senators, prohibits national government agencies and instrumentalities, government-owned and controlled corporations, local government units, private companies, private and public educational institutions, and other non-government entities from requiring the submission of another or newer copies of the aforementioned certificates when a valid certificate has already been presented.

This, Pangilinan said, will lessen the burden on Filipinos, especially those who are applying for employment and have no luxury of time to process newer copies.

"Malaking ginhawa ito lalo na para sa mga kababayan nating nag-a-apply lang ng trabaho, passport o kaya para sa kanilang pag-aaral," Pangilinan said in a statement.

"Malaking tipid ito sa pera, oras, at pagod," he added.

Pangilinan said that new or old, official documents particularly birth certificates needed for local employment, as long as they are readable, are good to go.

As to the verification of the authenticity of the documents, he said the bill mandates the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) with the help of the Department of Information and Communications Technology to develop a civil registry database and establish a virtual viewing facility in the local civil registries to help in this regard.

The PSA is also mandated to upgrade its virtual viewing facility and prioritize the migration of its civil registry database into a fully digitized system.

"Dapat nating gamitin ang lahat ng mga technology na available na para maibsan ang paghihirap ng ating mga kababayan sa pagproseso ng mga importanteng dokumento. Umpisa pa lang itong panukalang batas na ito sa pag-simplify ng mga bureaucratic process. Masaya akong naipasa ito," Pangilinan said.