In Bacolod, acquiring city government documents will soon require a security seal.
This came after the Sangguniang Panlungsod approved on third and final reading Wednesday, September 20, the “Bacolod City Document Security Seal Ordinance” that will require all city government documents to have a document security system that will ensure their authenticity and genuineness.
The ordinance, authored by Councilor Al Victor Espino, said that the prevalence of fake, counterfeit, bogus, and forged documents has made the need to put an additional security feature to official and regularly issued legal and original documents of the Bacolod City government.
The ordinance will have an allocation of P35 million for the security seal program, which will be taken from city funds.
According to the ordinance, this city policy will give importance to efforts aimed to curb, discourage, and frustrate the intending counterfeiting or forgery of its official and regularly issued documents by availing technology-based document security system that is also easily verifiable.
If implemented the city mayor will have the discretion to determine the appearance, features, and design of the document security seal as well as the documents, offices, departments, barangay, and other agencies of the city government that will require its use.
Among the offices and departments of the city that will use the security seal are the Local Civil Registrar, Business Permits and Licensing Office, City Assessor’s Office, City Engineering Office, City Health Office, Bacolod Traffic Authority Office, City Accountant’s Office, City Planning and Development Office, Environment and Natural Resources Office, Office of the Building Official, Bids and Awards Committee, Office of the City Mayor, SP, Tourism Office, City Library, and City Agriculture.*