Certificates of live birth, death, and marriage issued, signed, certified or authenticated by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) and its predecessor, the National Statistics Office (NSO), and the local civil registries are deemed permanently valid regardless of the date of issuance, and must be recognized and accepted in all government or private transactions and services.
This was embodied in Senate Bill No. 2450 unanimously approved by the Upper House as authored by Sen. Francis Pangilinan.
The measure stated that such documents are permanently valid provided that they remained intact, readable, and visibly contained the authenticity and security features.
The bill prohibits national government agencies and instrumentalities, government-owned and controlled corporations, local government units, private companies, private and public educational institutions, and other non-government entities from requiring the submission of another or newer copies of the aforementioned certificates when a valid certificate has already been presented.
Pangilinan said that new or old, official documents particularly birth certificates needed for local employment, as long as they are readable, are good to go.
Pangilinan said the proposed law would lessen the burden on Filipinos, especially those who are applying for employment and have no luxury of time to process newer copies.
“This is a big convenience for our people especially those applying for a job, passport or for their studies, “ Pangilinan stressed, adding they can save money, time, and effort chasing their papers.
“As a principal author of this measure, we’d like to thank the sponsor Senator [Bong] Revilla for seeing the measure through,” Pangilinan said. He also thanked his colleagues in the Senate for supporting the bill.
Revilla also said the people no longer need to “unnecessarily spend time and money in securing new copies of their documents.”
“With this piece of legislation, we have clearly and categorically provided the permanent validity of the civil registry documents regardless of the date of issuance. As such, they will be recognized and accepted in all government or private transactions,” he said.
Revilla sponsored the bill on the floor as chairman of the Senate Committee on Civil Service, Government Reorganization and Professional Regulation.
Co-sponsor Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto said, “in one sentence, this is the gist of the bill: A birthday can be celebrated yearly. But birth certificates are forever,”
“Same with marriages. Legally, you can have many – for as long as it is due to death of spouse or of love – but the marriage certificate for each should be valid for as long as you two live happily together, which is not necessarily ever after,” he added.
As to the verification of the authenticity of the documents, he said the bill mandates the PSA with the help of the Department of Information and Communications Technology to develop a civil registry database and establish a virtual viewing facility in the local civil registries to help in this regard.
The PSA is also mandated to upgrade its virtual viewing facility and prioritize the migration of its civil registry database into a fully digitized system.