TACLOBAN CITY – The regional office of the National Statistics Office (NSO) in partnership with Plan Philippines aim to institutionalize a system called Barangay Civil Registration Project (BCRS) that would pave the way for a 100% civil and birth registration marginalized sector in Eastern Visayas.

According to NSO Regional Director Rolando Dimaunahan, they have already started their initial operation just this month and they hope that by the year 2007 the people in the region would already get acquainted with the system that the registration of their children could be done in the barangays and not only in municipal offices.

Dimaunahan disclosed that many in the region, especially children, are still unregistered despite the registration campaign effort of their office.

“Under registration is out number one enemy here…we should address this problem…because if this continues, several of our people would have no record in our office which might create problems in the future,” Dimaunahan said.

Starting this January, the NSO with Plan Philippines, being the funding agency, will start reaching out even the far-flung barangays to register children through the BCRS system.

Dimaunahan pointed out that people who belong to the marginalized sector usually reside in remote barangays and usually would not come to the municipal offices to register their children because they don’t see its significance.

“With the BCRS our fellowmen in the marginalized sector would realize that they are given attention and that their children have the right for a name and nationality that unregistered children cannot benefit from the basic services that the government offers because they are not legal citizens of the country, technically speaking,” Dimaunahan added.

The implementation of the Birth registration project is nationwide in scope but NSO-8 was made to focus on the marginalized sector alone. This makes the rein strategic base in the implementation of the project towards the poor people in deprived areas in the region.

Other Regions were chosen to address the issues of other sectors pertaining to birth and civil registration. The Cordillera Autonomous Region (CAR) focused on the Indigenous People in Luzon; the national Capital Region (NCR) for Muslims in Luzon and Children in Need of Special Protection (CNSP); Region 10 for Indigenous People in Mindanao; and Region 9 for Muslims CNSP in Mindanao