THE Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) recently opened a fixed registration center in Pampanga for the Philippine Identification System (PhilSys).
PSA Regional Office-Central Luzon Officer-in-Charge Arlene Divino said the registration center, located on the second floor of Robinsons Starmills, will serve as a counter for the Step 2 process of the PhilSys, which focused on the validation of supporting documents and collection of registrants’ biometric information, including fingerprint biometrics, iris scans and face photographs.
Step 1 includes PSA enumerators going house-to-house and collecting demographic information of low-income household heads in select areas nationwide conducted in the last quarter of 2020.
The fixed registration center, which is open Mondays to Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., will initially cater to San Fernando residents who have undertaken the Step 1 process and have received message from the PSA as to their respective Step 2 schedules.
“Walk-in clients could be accommodated, provided there are no scheduled registrants in queue at the time of their visit,” Divino said.
The rollout of the PhilSys Step 2 process should have been implemented in January 2021, admitting some minor glitches in the system prevented the agency from pushing this through.
“Supposedly, this should have started first week of January, but we needed to perfect the system first because we cannot afford to roll out with even a minor glitch in the system as this would be a lifetime ID,” Divino said.
She also clarified that Step 1 will still be continued, as one of the three modes PSA has devised for the registration process included assisted registration, online registration and institutional registration.
Divino said they devised three modes of registration for Step 1.
Mode 1 is assisted, where PhilSys field teams will conduct house-to-house pre-registration, specifically to reach low-income households in areas where there is slow internet connectivity.
Mode 2 is online, where registrants connect to the PhilSys online portal, enter their demographic information, and set their schedule for an appointment with a designated registration center near their residence.
Mode 3 is institutional, a mobile registration where PhilSys team will go directly to institutions like military camps, seminaries, nursing homes, and the like.
Divino clarified that online registration for Step 1 has yet to commence but is targeted for implementation by second quarter of this year.
Under these three modes, the PSA targets to register more than 7.8 million Central Luzon residents this year, broken down as follows: Aurora – 132,372; Bataan – 538,637; Bulacan – 2,232,488; Nueva Ecija – 1,545,683; Pampanga – 1,824,899; Tarlac – 967,272; and Zambales – 594,969.
“Priority target is 15 years old and above, but the moment we reached our target, we may register those below 15 years old. For 5 years old below, we require their mothers should have been registered first and these young registrants would be required to re-register upon reaching the age of 15,” Divino said.
As of date, the PSA had already established a total of 231 PhilSys registration centers in almost all municipalities and cities regionwide.