Delays in the delivery of registration kits thwarted the Philippine Statistics Authority’s (PSA) plan to begin the Step 2 stage in the registration for the national ID system on Wednesday.
PSA Deputy National Statistician Rosalinda Bautista told the BusinessMirror that there were also delays in terms of the readiness of the registration system.
The registration for the national ID was supposed to be carried out in three stages. The first stage was to collect the demographic information of registrants; step 2 will collect biometric information and perform an iris scan; and the last was to receive the physical national ID which contains the unique PhilCard number.
“We did not start Step 2 today. We have delays in the delivery of registration kits and the readiness of the registration client system,” Bautista told the BusinessMirror. “No exact date for start [of Step 2 registration] as of now.”
The national ID system is one of the primary means by which the government aims to improve social services. In the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) forum on digital economy, PSA admitted that the lack of a national ID system may have prompted the existence of “duplicates” in the distribution of the Social Amelioration Program (SAP) benefits.
Based on data shared by PSA, at least 1.1 million of the 18 million recipients were duplicates as identified by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) in the SAP.
If each of the 1.1 million duplicates received an P8,000 worth of SAP this year, based on the BusinessMirror calculations, this would cost the government around P8.8 billion.
“Without a foundational ID system to verify and establish uniqueness of all Filipinos, DSWD and other agencies have had to depend on paper forms, manual registration processes and [no] post-payment validation [was conducted],” Marcos Ryan Laurente of the PSA’s PhilSys Registry Office said in a presentation on Wednesday.
“The Philippine Identification System plays a major role in ensuring that we are really giving financial aid or ayuda to the right beneficiary of the social amelioration programs of the government,” he added.
Meanwhile, for Step 1 of the national ID system registration, the PSA reported that it has registered 6.289 million as of November 24, or 38 days since the registration began.
This represented 63.8 percent of the 9 million target set for the year. Registrations completed last November 24 reached 115,965, or 72.7 percent of the target for the day.
The registrants came from the provinces of Ilocos Sur, La Union, Pangasinan, Cagayan, Isabela, Bataan, Bulacan, Nueva Ecija, Pampanga, Tarlac, Zambales, Batangas, Cavite, Laguna, Quezon, Rizal, Albay, Camarines Sur, Masbate, Antique, Capiz, Iloilo, Negros Occidental, Bohol, Cebu, Negros Oriental, Davao de Oro, Davao del Norte, Davao del Sur, Davao Occidental, Leyte, and Tawi-Tawi.
As of November 24, around 87.3 percent of the enumerators registered an average of 49 Filipinos. They spent 4.5 minutes per registrant leading to an average total transaction time of 9 minutes per registrant.
The PSA also reported that 549,729 of those who registered for Step 1 of the national ID system did not have any IDs. Based on the November 20 update of PSA, around 89 percent of registrants so far have signified that they currently do not have bank accounts.
According to the PSA, this emphasizes the importance of ensuring the rollout of the country’s national ID program as one of the main hindrances to financial inclusion is the lack of formal identification.
PhilSys will allow more Filipinos access to basic banking services and make them less vulnerable to informal lending practices that charge onerous interest rates. Formal identification will also help Filipinos access government and financial services.
Data shared by PSA showed that 1 in 5 of the poorest 40 percent of Filipinos have been unable to apply for government services because they lacked the required IDs.
PSA also said that 1 in 6 of the poorest 40 percent of Filipinos have been unable to receive government financial support because they lacked the required IDs.
Image credits: Nonoy Lacza