Lacson chides gov’t over long queues for national ID listup

FILE Sen. Panfilo Lacson

Sen. Panfilo Lacson on Tuesday called on the national government to address the “pestering issues” that hound its programs meant to uplift the lives of the people, the latest of which are the long lines that have been reported at enlistment sites for the National ID system.

He said that while the national ID program had finally taken off, it has again been slowed down by many issues, including controversies marring the awarding of outsourced service and supply contracts, crashing of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) website and the long hours of waiting in line for prospective ID registrants.

“If the national government is really serious about implementing the National ID system and capturing as many registrants and serving the purpose of better delivery of social services to our people … they better resolve some pestering issues quickly and surely,” he said.

Lacson made the call amid complaints that citizens applying for Philippine Identification System (PhilSys) ID were being made to endure the long wait in queues for hours.

The PSA on Monday announced that it had completed registration for 16 million applications for the PhilSys ID, and had released more than 1 million Philippine Identification cards.

Lacson, who sponsored in the Senate the bill of what would become Republic Act No. 11055, or the PhilSys Act of 2018, expressed dismay over reports that many Filipinos were lining up at dawn to register for the PhilSys ID while many others spent hours waiting in line.

“The key to the effective implementation of the National ID System, or PhilSys Act, is our ability to ‘capture the universe’ and encourage as many Filipinos to sign up and register,” he said. INQ