THE Mandaue City government will exempt indigent residents of the city from paying registration fees for birth, marriage, or death certificates if a proposed ordinance will be approved by the City Council.
The proposed ordinance will also exempt indigent residents from paying filing and certain fees collected by the city’s Civil Registrar on corrections or changes of records in the Civil Registry.
The proposed ordinance, which is sponsored by Councilors Ernie Manatad and Demetrio Cabungcal Cortes Jr., aims to address the problem of unregistered births, deaths and marriages because the city’s indigent constituents could not afford to pay the consequential fees of securing these certificates.
The proposed ordinance also defined an indigent as any Mandaue City resident who is a registered voter of the city for at least a year, including his/her children, and certified by the City Social Welfare Services (CSWS) as indigent. The proposed ordinance was passed on first reading during the Mandaue City Council’s session last Wednesday.