SSS releases UMID cards on time

The state-run Social Security System (SSS) over the weekend said members of the pension fund applying for the unified multi-purpose identification (UMID) cards may now receive their cards within 30 working days from their card application.

SSS president and chief executive officer Emmanuel Dooc said the production of UMID cards is now back to its normal processing time after it experienced delay from mid-February 2017 due to the stoppage of operation of the central verification system (CVS) of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA). The CVS checks biometric uniqueness of member applicants, which is required prior to the issuance of UMID cards.

“We would like to inform our members that the UMID card processing time is now back to its normal processing time. Your UMID cards will be delivered right into your doorsteps within 30 days upon successful data capture via Philpost delivery,” Dooc said.

SSS said UMID cards are released for mailing within eight days upon successful application and data capture of the member and will be delivered via Philpost within two weeks for National Capital Region and four weeks for those with registered addresses outside NCR.

Dooc said the backlog in UMID card production was wiped out on the last week of September this year.

According to SSS ID card production department, almost one million UMID card applications were affected by the delay since the machine overheat happened last February. As of end-September 2017, the SSS has already released some one million UMID cards to its members.

To date, SSS has already released more than nine million UMID cards to its members.

The CVS stopped operation from mid-February to mid-June 2017 due to high temperature of the data center of Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT).

To date, the temperature in DICT remained stable and compliant to the required temperature for data centers for proper functioning of the CVS. The CVS was housed in DICT by PSA after SSS turned over the CVS administration to PSA in July 2015.