PSA vows to expedite delivery of more national ID cards

SOME HAVE IT,MANY DON’T A woman shows her national ID which she got at SM North in Quezon City in July last year. —PHOTO BY GRIG C.MONTEGRANDE

MANILA, Philippines — More Filipinos will be able to receive their national identification cards in the coming days, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) said on Friday, claiming that it has printed and dispatched over 50 million PhilID cards.

The PSA said that as of December 22, it had printed and dispatched for delivery a total of 50,064,756 PhilIDs for Philippine Identification System (PhilSys) registrants.

“More and more Filipinos can now enjoy the benefits of being PhilSys-registered. We encourage our kababayans [compatriots] to fully utilize the PhilID and make it their primary ID in their transactions,” National Statistician Dennis Mapa said in a statement.

“We would also like to assure the public that we will continue to expedite the issuance and delivery of PhilIDs so that Filipinos can enjoy the convenience of having a valid ID in their transactions,” he added.

On Thursday, PSA said that more than 82 million Filipinos have registered for PhilIDs.

The PSA said  that the PhilIDs have been the most common identification card presented for mobile wallet service verifications.

Earlier this year, delays in deliveries and manufacturing of PhilIDs have marred the PhilSys program.

In September, PSA officials told a Senate committee that despite logging a total of about 81 million Filipinos who have registered for the PhilSys, the actual physical IDs of around 41 million of these registrants are yet to be delivered.

The PSA attributed the delays to the failure of BSP’s private supplier to manufacture the IDs on time due to the surge in the number of registrants.

Last November, the agency pointed out that the delays were caused by instances of “close matches” which means that PSA personnel would have to manually verify the authenticity of its registrant’s information.