BY: REY ANTHONY H. CHIU
TAGBILARAN CITY, February 28, 2014
(PIA) --- At the Civil Registry Month celebration in February, census
authorities stressed that children have the right to name and nationality
but parents have the responsibility to give correct information for proper
registration.
National Statistics Office (NSO) Bohol
chief statistician Jessamyne Anne Alcazaren, at the weekly Kapihan sa
PIA, said people are unnecessarily hassled while getting registration
papers for their important dates because they miss to see the wrong entries
before they are filed at the national databanks.
The most ideal way of registering is
for the informant, which are the parents or the medical attendants, to be
certain of the huge roles they perform, she said.
Then there is supposedly the teamwork
between the informants and the local registrar, she added at the radio forum
broadcasted all over Bohol.
Short of that, there’s a chance there
would be a problem, and that entails lengthy court proceedings or hassling
publication that ends up one spending to get a judicial order for corrections
of entry and the mandatory publication of such.
In the light of the hassles, where
parties sometimes spend too much just to have entries corrected, a new
law, Republic Act (RA) 9048, now authorizes the city or municipal civil
registrar or the consul general to correct a clerical or typographical error in
an entry without the need of a judicial order.
RA 9048 however disallows corrections
of clerical or typographical errors in sex, age, nationality, and status of a
person.
Reasons for the corrections however are
when the petitioner finds the first name or nickname to be ridiculous, tainted
with dishonor or extremely difficult to write or pronounce, or the name has
been habitually and continuously used by the petitioner and he has been
publicly known by that first name or nickname in the community; or the change
will avoid confusion.
As for other necessary changes in
entries, RA 10172 which amended parts of Republic Act No. 9048, now allows the
civil registrars to change or correct without a judicial order, clerical or
typographical errors and change of first name or nickname, the day and month in
the date of birth or sex of a person where it is patently clear that there was
a clerical or typographical error or mistake in the entry.
No corrections however involve the change of nationality, age, or
status of the petitioner, according to the law.” (rmn/RAHC/PIA Bohol)