MANILA – The discrepancies in the distribution of the financial aid under the national government’s social amelioration program could have been solved by the national ID system, according to President Rodrigo Duterte.
“Nagkakaroon tayo ng problema. Hindi ito perfect kaagad,” Duterte said in an address to the nation on late Monday evening. “Kung may ID system lang tayo, naiwasan natin itong mga ‘to.”
“Itong mga left, kaya kita mo ngayon, wala tayong ID system until now. Kung wala kayo sa listahan, then hindi kayo mabigyan. Hindi na kasalanan ‘yan, ‘wag kayong magsisi sa gobyerno,” he added.
The President also said the government will conduct another rapid survey with the help of local government units to identify those who were not included in the list of the Department of Social Welfare and Development.
“After a revalidation at malaman na namin, I’m sure Secretary Bautista can act immediately,” Duterte said. “Kung wala ka, maghintay ka and we will come up (with something).”
A National ID system was pushed even during the previous administrations but all these efforts went to naught as most Filipinos felt giving up their privacy was too much to pay for the convenience and security benefits.
The DSWD plan to distribute P5,000 to P8,000 per month to 18 million Filipinos during the enhanced community quarantine is in chaos due to lack of a reliable and comprehensive database to determine who were eligible for the social amelioration program.
Meanwhile, Senate President Vicente Sotto III on Tuesday said that the snail-paced implementation of the national ID system should be investigated by the Senate once the session resumes in May.
“The system should have been in place now if not for the red tape. I will urge the Senate to investigate why this is so when we resume,” Sotto said in a statement. “We passed the national ID system almost two years ago, yet it has not been implemented.”
Duterte signed the Philippine Identification System Act in 2018, which seeks to harmonize, integrate, and interconnect the countless and redundant government IDs by establishing a single national identification system.
The ID will contain the PhilSys number, full name, facial image, sex, date of birth, blood type, and address of the concerned individual. The mass enrollment for the ID system will begin in mid-2020, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority./PN
