ILOILO CITY — Local civil registrars from the province and city of Iloilo gathered for a two-day orientation on Republic Act No. 10173, or the Data Privacy Act of 2012, starting Thursday.
Chief of the Compliance and Monitoring Division of the National Privacy Commission, Dr. Rolando R. Lansigan, said it is very important that they “should know how to handle this personal information, otherwise they might be violating the law.”
“They are the repository of a great number of personal data,” Lansigan said.
The civil registrar’s office handles personal information from marriage contract, marriage license to birth and death certificates, he said.
“They should be aware of what the law is all about because somehow, they are sharing this personal information. They are releasing, they are recording, they are disposing or even retaining this personal information , even collecting it from various levels of stakeholders, like (the) Iloilo citizen,” he said in an interview.
Lansigan said under the law, all personal information should be handled carefully and should not be shared with anyone unless there is a legal obligation to share, there is consent from data subject, and there is a legal purpose or legal objective in sharing the personal data.
If it does not fall in any of these reasons, the personal data should not be shared with anyone.
He added that the Philippines is the only country in the world that has provided a “corresponding imprisonment” in case of breach of the law. In other countries, they only impose a fine.
Violation of the law means an imprisonment of a maximum of six years and a fine of up to PHP5 million to PHP6 million at the most, even if it involves only one personal information.
The law covers the protection of personal information, not only from the government sector but the private sector as well, he said.
Personal data could be name, address, age, education, birth date and date of death, while sensitive personal information include health records and other government-issued IDs.
“These are all classified as personally identifiable information, which should be taken care of by respective organizations, like the civil registrar’s office,” he said.
However, he said the law covers only personal data and not corporate data and institutional information.
The law was enacted in 2012 and the National Privacy Commission was formed in 2016. Despite being new, the commission has already reached a greater number of the country’s population in terms of raising awareness.
Also more than 1,000 cases have been filed at the commission. Those who feel their privacy is violated, can file their complaint online by accessing the website www. privacy.gov.ph.
“In a matter of less than a week, the National Privacy Commission is very responsive when it comes to filing of cases, filing of complaints. Then in a month’s time probably we can hear both parties for the investigation and enforcement of this law,” he said.
Meanwhile, Romeo Caesar Manikan Jr., Iloilo City Civil Registrar and president of the Association of Civil Registrar’s in Iloilo, said they hope their concerns would be properly addressed during the two-day orientation.
“As a frontline provider of local government units, we have been facing challenges in our issuance of birth, marriage and death certificates,” he said.
He cited that before, their knowledge was that only the birth certificate was covered by a confidentiality rule. “The passage of the law already encompasses marriage and death certificates,” he said. (Perla Lena/PNA)
