SEN. Vicente Sotto III wants to "unify" the clearance systems of the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to further cut "red tape" in obtaining such documents.
"Our citizens are still victims of the tedious bureaucratic systems," Sotto said in filing Senate Bill 2155, creating the unified criminal clearance system database.
He said that the PNP and NBI clearances are among the required documents a Filipino must obtain before employment, travel, business registration, among other government and non-government transactions.
"This is to prove that the individual does not have any outstanding warrant or prove the existence of any criminal record against him or her," he said.
The senator said that while both clearances "have several differences, the similarities are striking and the redundancy is evident."
"Given the importance of these clearances, every Filipino goes through the burden of obtaining them," Sotto said.
"Most of our fellow Filipinos spend at least one day just to process a specific government requirement. The time, money, and other resources spent queuing and processing could have been used elsewhere," he added.
Sotto noted that it has been 19 years since Congress passed the Anti-Red Tape Act of 2007.
"It has even gone through an amendment in 2018 to keep up with the changing times."
"However, our citizens still go through a lot to obtain government IDs, permits, certifications, and clearances," he said.