Probe of delayed PhilSys IDs pushed

PAPER ID A congressional worker shows a sample of the PhilSys ID presented to the House of Representatives when the Philippine Statistics Authority was seeking funding. —INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel III is calling for a Senate blue ribbon investigation of the prolonged delay in the issuance of the national identification cards, saying this could be a telltale sign of wrongdoing within the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA). Pimentel on Tuesday filed Senate Resolution No. 585, which directs the Senate committee on good government and accountability to investigate in aid of legislation the “long delay” in the issuance of national IDs. He cited Section 3 of Republic Act No. 11055, which created the Philippine Identification System (PhilSys) to provide valid proof of identity for all citizens and resident aliens as a means of simplifying public and private transactions. In some cases, the senator said, the printed IDs are no longer readable after three months. In his resolution, Pimentel cited the findings of the Commission on Audit that as of the end of 2021, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) delivered only 27,356,750 prepersonalized cards, or 76 percent of the 36 million required number of IDs for 2021. The figure is far from the 116 million prepersonalized IDs that BSP has to deliver from 2021 to 2023, the senator said. —MELVIN GASCON