MANILA, Philippines — Remedial legislation conferring lifetime validity on birth, death, and marriage certificates has now been approved on the third and final reading by the Senate.
This is after senators voted 21-0 to pass Senate Bill No. (SBN) 2450, or the Permanent Validity of the Certificates of Live Birth, Death, and Marriage Act.
The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA ) issues these official documents, formerly the National Statistics Office (NSO), the local governments’ Civil Registry Office, and the Philippine Foreign Service Post.
Under the proposed measure, the birth, marriage, and death certificates issued by PSA will have permanent validity regardless of the date of issuance and shall be recognized in all government or private transactions. However, the certificates must be intact, readable, and still visibly contain the authenticity and security features.
According to PSA, birth certificates do not have an expiration date. Although, some institutions require birth certificates that were newly issued.
This approval also hammered a reconciled final version of the same measure earlier passed by the House of Representatives.
Senator Kiko Pangilinan, the principal author of Senate Bill 2450, has thanked his fellow senators for supporting its passage.
“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,”
SENATOR KIKO PANGILINAN
According to Pangilinan, this measure will lessen the burden on Filipinos, especially those who are applying for employment and have no luxury of time to process newer copies.
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.
(We must use all the technologies available to alleviate the hardship of our countrymen in processing important documents. This bill is just the beginning of simplifying bureaucratic processes. I am glad that the bill has been passed)