Beating the deadline

Today, April 26, is the last day for the mandatory registration of all Subscriber Identity Module (SIM). Under the Republic Act (RA) 11934, or the SIM Registration Act, the registration that started in December last year was carried out during these past 180 days on all SIM-activated mobile phones and other mobile applications that use one-time pin (OTP) all over the Philippines.

However, the same law allows the Department of Information and Communications (DICT) as well as the National Telecommunications (NTC) to extend the deadline by another 120 days should it be necessary. At the meeting yesterday at Malacañang, President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. (PBBM) and his Cabinet members all agreed to grant conditional 90-day extension of the SIM registration.

PBBM signed RA 11934 on Oct.10, 2022. The implementing rules and regulations (IRR) of this law came out on Dec.12 last year. Based on this law, all current SIM subscribers must submit a completed form via database platform, or website offered to them by the telecommunications companies (telcos) Globe, Smart, or DITO. SIMs that will remain unregistered after the deadline will be deactivated.

For post-paid subscribers of these telcos, once they receive their individual notices via their mobile phones, their SIMs get automatically registered. The more challenging really are the bulk of the SIMs that are pre-paid which comprise the most number of still being un-registered.

Out of more than 100 million SIMs issued all over the country, DICT Secretary Ivan Uy reported to PBBM and the Cabinet, only 82 million subscribers complied with the law’s deadline as of Monday. About 50 million “disposable” SIMs, or pre-paid remain unregistered.

Naturally, the urgent calls for extension of the deadline come from the telcos themselves because they will lose substantial revenues if their biggest market of pre-paid subscribers will be de-activated.

Interviewed on TV news program of the ABS-CBN, Globe SIM chief sustainability and corporation communications officer Yolly Crisanto noted that while there is better trending in the SIM registration among its subscribers, many of them have failed to register because of their lack of government-issued Identification cards (IDs). But there are at least 16 kinds of government IDs enumerated in the IRR of this law.

One of these acceptable IDs is the person with disability (PWD) cards. Issued by the local government units (LGUs), the ID cards for PWDs are required to be renewed under our existing laws. PWD-ID cards serve as proof of disability to fully enjoy the benefits and privileges which include, among other things, 20% discount and exemption from the payment of 12% value added tax (VAT).

At present, the National Council on Disability Affairs (NCDA) Administrative Order No.001, Series of 2021 provides that the ID card issued to PWDs shall be valid for five years only.

The NCDA guidelines mandate that PWD cards shall be issued to any bona fide Filipino with permanent disabilities due to any one or more of the following types of disabilities: deaf/hard of hearing, Intellectual, learning, mental, orthopedic, physical, psychosocial, speech and language impairment, visual, people with cancer, and people with rare disease.

Speaking of cancer, University of the Philippines-Philippine General Hospital (UP-PGH) Cancer Institute head Dr. Jorge Ignacio made a valid point against the required medical certification before the PWD card can be renewed, especially to cancer patients and survivors. An oncologist by specialization, Dr. Ignacio pointed out in particular breast cancer survivors as example to drive home his point. “Why require them to get medical certification in order to renew their PWD card? It is not as if they grow a new breast?” Dr. Ignacio argued.

Dr. Ignacio issued this appeal during our Kapihan sa Manila Bay breakfast news forum last week when we tackled the menace of breast cancer victimizing thousands of Filipinas every year. Upon learning this during our Kapihan sa Manila Bay forum, Tingog Rep.Jude Acidre vowed to eliminate the unnecessary burden on the PWDs ID card holders.

Incidentally, Union Bank, MetroBank, BDO, and other banks sent out email messages to their respective depositors to remind them also about the SIM registration deadline. Many online banking and E-wallet applications such as GCash, PayMaya and other financial transactions are all part of the services linked with our individual SIMs.

While the SIM registration got extended, the text scammers are the most hard-pressed by to beat this deadline. They went on high-drive peddling their text scams during the past few days as the SIM deadline was fast approaching. Over the weekend, a scammer has twice sent text messages one after the other about my account at Union Bank that was supposedly “BLOCKED” and that I need to update it to continue services.

The most irritating part though of this SIM registration campaign was the piercing text alarm. Under the Free Mobile Disasters Alerts Act, telco providers are mandated to ring the emergency cell broadcast to warn their customers in times of calamity. Globe justified resorting to this antic, citing the government made no objection to its use of the system to remind its customers to register their SIM. In fairness to Globe, they also came out with various incentives similar come-on and other forms of incentives to drum up compliance of their subscribers. But apparently, to no avail.

Methinks, it is of no consequence if there are still about 20 million SIMs for registration.

On the flipside, there was high compliance by law-abiding SIM subscribers.

It is precisely the objective of this law to cleanse, weed out the so many loosely issued SIM that have become the platform of many scammers.

To those beating the deadline, the 90-day extension is not really a reprieve. As the DICT chief called it, they are still “incentivize” for late registration. Delayed un-registered SIMs will lose access to the Tiktoks, and other online apps as penalty for late registration.