By Rhona Canoy
SO… I spent the last couple of days processing my dad’s birth certificate. Yeah, we found out he doesn’t have one. Not because he was never registered but, because somewhere along the way, the records disappeared. And the challenges that we encountered just trying to get it are enough to make me have diarrhea.
For some people, the process is alien because they have people in their employ who do all the running around and waiting in line. For the sake of awareness, we should all at least once go through the trauma ourselves. If one keeps an open and objective mind, it is not difficult to have compassion for everyone on either side of the counter.
First, this whole issue of having to present a birth, marriage, or death certificate from the Philippine Statistics Authority shouldn’t even be an issue. Understandably, the authenticity of the document is determined by the office that issues it. After all, we Pinoys are noted for producing the most well-done imitation documents. Of course, with the advent of communication technology, it is getting harder and harder to do so.
We did have the choice of applying for it online, but that would have taken at least a week to receive the document in the mail, and we needed the BC as soon as we could get it. Hence, the obvious decision to go to the regional PSA office to get it. This is one of those times when my advancing age works to advantage because I didn’t need to get a priority number. However, bear in mind, seniors, that just because it’s a priority lane, you are still going to have to stand in line and wait your turn.
Funny thing about Pinoys and queues. There is always going to be someone who will try to finagle their way into cutting the line. And most Pinoys won’t tell these line-cutters a thing, but make all sorts of funny disparaging noises, assuming that the wrongdoer will get the hint. Don’t drop a hint! Say, “The end of the line is back there, please.” That usually ends the irritation. If you do tell them, there is usually a sheepish grin that they got found out. Because, yes, those people know just where the line is. And they just wanted to give it the old college try.
Anyway, I finally got to the counter and made my request. Only to be told that my dad wasn’t in the system. I was instructed to wait for the issuance of a negative certificate (which is a piece of paper that says he doesn’t have a record) which took a couple of hours, and take it to the Civil Registrar at City Hall to see if they have his records, so it can be uploaded to the system. I thought it ironic that we needed a certificate to confirm that dad doesn’t have a birth certificate. And we had to pay for it, too!
We finally struggled successfully through traffic and made it to City Hall across town, where we were cursorily informed that since my dad’s records were so old (he is 90 years old, after all) his birth certificate was probably gone forever, thanks to “Sendong.” Then, the lady told us we needed to secure two government documents which indicated his birth date and come back. So we had to go to Comelec to secure a voter certification, where we found out that dad’s voter status had been deactivated. I guess they decided that his age meant he was probably dead.
Anyway, Comelec claimed that, per records, dad didn’t vote in the past election. Ooooh, dad would be pissed to find this out. He had waited patiently, after weaving our way through and around Kauswagan Elementary School construction to get to our precinct. And because the old building wasn’t handicap-equipped, his wheelchair couldn’t make it into the precinct. Of course, he voted. He always does.
There must have been at least 14 people there who witnessed it. They had had to bring his ballot outside, assist dad in filling it out, then take it inside. I had to go and witness the ballot being fed into the counting machine, and sign the paper as a witness confirming his vote. Then he had to sign some record book, confirming that he voted, then get his finger indelibly inked. But since COMELEC couldn’t find his signature anywhere in their folders, they deactivated him and now he has to register again. He’s going to be pissed. But they gave us a certification anyway (which transaction actually took us only about twenty minutes), so... Thanks, Comelec!
Then we had to go back to the PSA office all the way across town to get a copy of his certificate of marriage, which (had we known) we would have gotten at the same time he got his negative certificate. Had we known. And, surprise! They had his marriage certificate on record. So we had to wait another two hours for it to get issued. We laughed about how dad was married but not born.
Then, we had to struggle through traffic again to get all the way across town to City Hall and submit the necessary documents to the Civil Registrar so we could late-register dad’s birth. And now we have to wait for ten working days to pass before we can go back and actually start the registration process.
Here’s my takeaway on this whole thing. Never at any point did we know exactly what we needed to do, and what documents we needed to produce. We had to wait at every stop to be told that we needed something and to come back. There was so much coming back that I was too confused at the end of the day. Yes, our current administration is trying to streamline the system so that any government transaction (of which this is one) should only take a minimum amount of time.
But when you have people working the system who have been there longer than the current administration, then the system and its procedures really don’t change. And we end up with harassed clerks having to work doubly hard to meet the time requirement. No wonder they’re so crabby.
So now, we wait for the prescribed time to lapse. So we can go back and make dad’s birth official. Someone should have warned us that the red tape is sticky on both sides.
