By Cai Ordinario, November 9, 2020; Business Mirror
https://businessmirror.com.ph/2020/11/09/psa-on-track-to-hitting-5-m-national-id-registrations/
THE Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) is confident it can register 5 million Filipinos in the National ID by the end of the month.
On Friday, the PSA announced that as of November 4, around 3.315 million Filipinos completed Step 1 of the registration process for the National ID.
Step 1 of the PhilSys registration involves the house-to-house collection of demographic information of select low-income household heads. This is a necessary first step in the three-step registration process.
“Yes. We can register 5 million Filipinos under Step 1 of the registration process on or before the end of November,” National Statistician Claire Dennis S. Mapa told BusinessMirror over the weekend.
Mapa added that the PSA is confident of completing the Step 1 registration of 9 million Filipinos by the end of the year.
Based on the PSA Step 1 registration data, a total of 147,426 Filipinos were registered on November 4. This was 92.4 percent of the target.
Despite this, the total Step 1 registration is already 123.9 percent of the targets for the 21-day period as of November 4.
It took PSA enumerators 4.9 minutes to register low-income Filipinos. Each enumerator was able to register 46 Filipinos per day.
Of those who were registered, 175,842 did not have any ID while 429,174 had voter’s ID. A total of 166,674 of those registered had Senior Citizen IDs; 144,743 had driver’s licenses; 134,565 had PhilHealth IDs; and 81,481 had birth certificates.
Starting October 25, 2020, PSA included a question on supporting documents or valid IDs of the registrants in line with the Step 2 Registration. More than 88 percent of the registrants signified the availability of supporting documents that they can use for the next step.
Set to begin this year, Step 2 is the capturing of biometric information such as fingerprints, iris, and facial photographs at designated registration centers. Step 3 is the issuance of the PhilSys Number (PSN), and the physical ID (PhilID).
PhilSys aims to provide Filipinos a formal identification that can be digitally verified. It will help low-income families to open bank or e-money accounts for a more efficient and safer distribution of government assistance given the Covid-19 pandemic and in response to calamities such as Typhoon Rolly.