A YouTube channel misleadingly claimed that Filipinos can now get their national identity document (ID) cards.
PINOY RANDOM TV, created in 2016, published a 12-minute video on Oct. 9 with a misleading title: “PWEDE NG KUMUHA NG NATIONAL ID (The National ID can now be obtained).” The whole stretch of the video was a series of news reports, with the story about the national ID system only featured in the first 54 seconds and in the last 13 seconds of the footage. It had a text overlay saying, “CLAIM YOUR NAT’L I.D. NOW.”
This is false.
Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Governor Benjamin Diokno announced in an Oct. 17 speech that the issuance of national ID under the Philippine Identification System (PhilSys) will begin in April 2020.
Diokno said BSP, which is part of the PhilSys Policy and Coordination Council (PSPCC), will shoulder the production cost of P3.4 billion-worth of 116 million pieces of blank ID cards and provide the “needed equipment and space for the embedding of personal information” onto cards for citizens and resident aliens under a memorandum of agreement with the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), the main implementing agency of PhilSys.
PhilSys serves as the “central identification platform” of the government for all Filipinos and resident aliens in the counyty. It is being implemented by virtue of Republic Act 11055 or the Philippine Identification System Act.
In an Oct. 8 report by Philippine News Agency, PSA Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) Regional Director Villafe Alibuyog said the pilot testing for registration in the PhilSys started in the National Capital Region (NCR) and Regions 4A and 3 in September. Alibuyog said it is expected that one million people from the pilot areas will be registered in the system by May 2020. PSA announced on Sept. 2 that PhilSys registration will be “scaled up” and opened to the public in July 2020.
PINOY RANDOM TV’s video surfaced two days after BSP signed last Oct. 7 a deal with PSA to subsidize the production of billions-worth of blank cards for the national ID system for three years.
The misleading video could have reached more than 614,000 social media users, with its traffic largely coming from public Facebook groups SARA DUTERTE FOR PRESIDENT 2022 ELECTIONS and Marikina News (the original), and Facebook page OFWS.Taiwan NEWS.
(Editor’s Note: VERA Files has partnered with Facebook to fight the spread of disinformation. Find out more about this partnership and our methodology.)
