THE DAY I FINALLY GOT MY UMID CARD

Just in case it hasn’t reached your radar yet, UMID stands for Unified Multipurpose Identification System. It has been around since 2005, as it was that year when Executive Order 420 was signed and ordered that all Government-Owned and -Controlled Corporations issuing ID cards undertake a “unified” multipurpose ID system to cut down on cost in producing multiple IDs that carry the same or related information.

Four years after, four government agencies inked a memorandum of understanding towards the joint implementation of the UMID: the Social Security System, the Government Service Insurance System, the Home Development Mutual Fund (Pag-IBIG) and the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth).

The UMID, however, has at its core the ID system of the SSS, which began issuing UMID cards in July last year. And so, just in case you’re wondering, this is why new members of the agency no longer receive the bluish SSS ID when they apply for one. Parenthetically, this also goes for those who are included in the applications backlog recently reported to have reached 600,000+, as the SSS card production facility conked out in April 2010 after 12 years of service.

Well, we can say that I was one of this backlog’s casualties, having my ID application done December of 2010. I remember having waited for about nine months before following up my application and learned that it was yet to be printed in October and delivered the following month.

November came; however, no SSS identification card was delivered. I waited for the next three months, thinking that I might finally get it anytime soon. But the inconvenience of not having a valid ID to present during financial transactions led me to yet again personally inquire about my ID’s status at the state insurer’s main branch in Quezon City.

Turned out my UMID card was indeed sent last November. Since that nothing was returned to them, I was told to go get a job order from their registry office on the second floor of the back building. My UMID card was probably still in the possession of the QC post office, they acknowledged, and that it would be better if I could just personally get it from there.

To cut the long story short, I finally got my UMID card a little over a week after that. The hunt, marked by grating long queues and waiting that felt like forever, was an eye-opener for me: when it comes to these kinds of things, don’t just wait.


And yes, it does have “the microchip.”