TACLOBAN CITY - Concerned with the significantly high number of unregistered children in Eastern Visayas, the National Statistics Office (NSO) and Plan International are pushing to establish a civil registration system in all barangays regionwide.
Based on the most recent census on population, it shows that Eastern Visayas has a total of 755,551 unregistered children, the second region in the country with the most number of people without legal identification.
The region has 76,195 children whose parents don’t know if their family members are registered with the local civil registrar. There are 127,197 births that were not reported. Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao and Central Mindanao ranks first and third, respectively among the regions with very low registration.
“We want to tap the barangay officials to help those people without birth certificates. We want to have them legal identity,” said Rolando Dimaunahan, NSO regional director, when interviewed by Leyte Samar Daily Express.
Dimaunahan said that the office of Plan International in the country, a non-government organization, is now soliciting funds from other countries to help finance in the proposal to make Eastern Visayas a pilot region in the implementation of barangay-based registration system.
The NSO regional director has no idea how much is the funding requirement but according to him, Plan International is seeking multi-million dollar financial aid from foreign countries.
“We welcome Plan International’s assistance and we are willing to train barangay secretaries for them to get involved in the system,” Dimaunahan told LSDE.
Currently, the organization is implementing birth registration initiative in 19 municipalities located in three Samar provinces and Southern Leyte. Most of the people in these areas are not aware of the civil registry.
In an earlier interview, Michael Reynaldo, Plan International program unit manager in Eastern Samar, said that in their informal survey, they have found out that around 80% of children in some areas of the province are not registered.
“Low registration is very common in remote areas because of the distance of villages from the city or municipal civil registrar. People are not aware of the importance of birth certificate,” Dimaunahan said.
The barangay-based registration scheme is a system that will tap barangay secretaries in reporting vital events to the local civil registrar.
The NSO regional chief has called on barangay officials to participate in this initiative if this will be fully implemented since the purpose is not to help NSO or Plan International but to help barangay residents to obtain civil documents.
Birth certificates have been a prerequisite in signing up for school, job application and other important transactions.
