House bill proposes fines, jail term for docs who don’t register a child’s live birth By XIANNE ARCANGEL,GMA NewsMarch 5, 2014 8:45am Doctors and midwives who fail to register the birth of a child within 30 days face a P5,000 fine and a possible jail term should the proposal of Misamis Oriental Rep. Juliette Uy be passed into law. House Bill 3753, otherwise known as the Civil Registration Act of 2014, seeks to mandate a more efficient and locally responsive system for recording vital events by making the registration of birth a simple process that can be accomplished with the aid of technology. Under the proposal, the attending physician, nurse, midwife, hospital administrator or any person who should be in charge of registering live births they have attended to, but who knowingly fails or withholds the delivery of copies of the certificate of live births to the city or municipal civil registrar for registration, will be penalized. Those who violate the law face imprisonment of not more than six months or a fine of not more than P5,000 or both, upon the discretion of the court. UNICEF report At a press briefing on Tuesday, Uy said she was compelled to file the bill upon learning that more than 7.5 million Filipinos were not registered or do not have a certificate of live birth. According to a United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) report released last year, 10 percent of Filipinos under the age of five, or an estimated 3 million children, were not registered at birth as of 2010. In its findings, the Unicef noted that many families in rural areas are either unaware or do not have enough information on how to register the birth of their children officially, with some parents possibly not understanding the significance of birth registration. Several families are also discouraged from filing a certificate of live birth because of the high fees and tedious process involved. Uy’s proposal seeks to address these problems by devolving the function of the National Statistics Office—now called the Philippine Statistical Authority—to local government units (LGUs) to make the processing of official documents more accessible to the public. It will also make the registration of births, deaths and marriages free of charge. “They need not to go to the main office just to apply for certificate of live birth, marriage contract or any other documents. All they need is to seek assistance to their city or municipality where they were born,” she said. Decentralizing the registration process to LGUs will also help the government cut costs so it can eventually establish real-time civil registration statistics, the lawmaker added. Plan International, a global organization focusing on children’s rights, has expressed its support for the proposed legislation, saying it will help more children become officially registered, thereby giving them both protection and recognition. “Birth registration is a critical event that can ‘make or break’ a child’s future. Children whose births are not registered are ‘invisible.’ Because of this, they are particularly more vulnerable to trafficking, forced labor, abuse and exploitation. Without a birth certificate, children may be denied access to legal, economic and social rights, such as rights to health care, education and protection,” Marco Savio, Plan International’s country director for the Philippines, said in a statement. Aside from making the registration of birth easier, HB 3743 also provides, among others, for the use of the National Security Paper (NSECPA) in the registration of documents in LGUs and the digitization of archives in the local civil registry office. — RSJ, GMA News
Posted on: Wed, 05 Mar 2014 07:24:42 +0000
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