FIRST COPY. Alex Gabilno (leftmost) displays the birth certificate on security paper that he received from the government during the Bagong Pilipinas Serbisyo Fair on Sunday at the Benguet State University. Gabilno is among the more than 5,400 beneficiaries in the Cordillera Administrative Region for the Birth Registration Program jointly being implemented by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) and the local civil registry offices in the region. (PNA photo by Liza T. Agoot)
LA TRINIDAD, Benguet – The Philippine Statistics Authority’s (PSA) PhilSys Birth Registration Assistance Project registered 5,490 residents in the six provinces of the Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) and in Baguio City in 2023.
PSA-CAR registration officer IV Gerald Tolito, in an interview on Monday, said Apayao posted the largest number of registrants at 1,442.
Tolito said Kalinga followed at 1,339 and it was trailed by Ifugao, 1,055; Mountain Province, 676; Abra, 529; and Benguet, 449.
PSA-CAR regional director Villafe Alibuyog in an interview said the free “birth registration program has been extended this year because they saw that there were many unregistered Filipinos and the program is benefitting thousands of people.”
Alibuyog said the unregistered individuals were discovered as government personnel conducted different censuses in households, reaching as far as single households in the mountains to catch the actual survey targets.
“It is important for animals to have papers but people need it more. That is why our government is extending assistance to any person who has not been registered so that they will have their papers giving them proof of their identity,” she added.
The program also caters to people from other regions.
Birth certificate
For 57 years, Alex Gabilno of Kapangan, Benguet did not know what a birth certificate looked like as he did not see the need or the relevance of the document until government workers explained the importance of being registered.
“I did not have it, I was not registered. It is my first time to hold this document which they say is important that identifies who I am,” Gabilno said in Ilocano on the sidelines of the awarding of the birth certificate during the Bagong Pilipinas Serbisyo Fair on Sunday at the Benguet State University in capital town La Trinidad. (PNA)
