NSO wants teachers to be well-versed on civil registration

By BONG PEDALINO, PIA Southern Leyte
October 7, 2011

MAASIN CITY, Southern Leyte  –  If only to put the records of school-based pupils and students straight, the National Statistics Office (NSO) here through its provincial head Jimmy Dagupan aims to interface with the mentors for an orientation on civil registration matters.

Last year, Dagupan was able to gather all the village secretaries of the province’s 500-strong barangays for a similar objective, the gathering said to be the first of its kind nationwide.

As a result, about 98% of civil registry records around the province were now accurate and in order, as the barangay secretaries would see to it that the entries in the birth certificate of newborns in their respective areas should be correct before submission, Dagupan said during the “Action Center” kapihan cable TV program Wednesday.

Still, he was concerned about the remaining 2%, probably caused by honest mistakes, and he planned to link with the local offices of the Department of Education (DepEd) in the city and province to address this gap.

“We intend to coordinate with the Department of Education for the teachers around the province to be given time for an orientation on civil registration,” said Dagupan.

He said birth certificates of children must be asked upon enrollment by virtue of a law that was in effect since the mid-1970’s, but until the present, the common lament on erroneous names since elementary, high school, and college years of a certain person are still familiar.

Dagupan dug into history to explain why changes in spelling and even full names and surnames of people can happen, saying that civil registration in the country came into force only in 1944 – ironically the war years – and over time, this process underwent transition in the system.

Worse, baptismal records for those without civil records often were arbitrarily written by Church-based scribes, or simply listed out of negligence, without care for particular spellings, and thus taken for granted.

All these can be corrected once educators take pains checking on records at school for consistency, the expected output of the planned civil registration orientation for teachers, Dagupan mused.