Misspelled Family name in an official document

My mother finally got her passport last Friday (14 May 2010). But instead of elation, she was disappointed. The reason for her disappointment was that her family name was misspelled. The DFA cited that her marriage certificate states that her husband’s (my dad’s) family name was misspelled as well. I just wonder why the clerical staff of DFA who encoded the passport did not follow the application form that my mom filled.

My mom retired from the government service about 6 years ago. She used that marriage certificate from the day one she joined the government service. There were no questions asked then but years after retiring and encountering such mistakes is heart breaking.

They could not anymore contest that misspelled passport that the DFA issued but they were advised to make all things right by going back to NSO and correct the wrong entry in her marriage certificate. It’s a very tedious process considering that my mom’s already a senior citizen. Aside from that, she’s already a widow and people are asking why she would waste her time to amend the wrong entries in her marriage certificate.

I’ve met a couple of OFWs who suffers the same fate as my mom, having wrong entries in their official documents. Since it would take a lot of effort and money to correct the mistake, some of them just live with the mistakes that they weren’t responsible in the first place. Some have worked here for years with passports bearing a different or misspelled family name. He can get away with everything now but how about if something happens to him? Will he be able to get his benefits from SSS or other government agencies even if he has different or misspelled family name? There’s this unwritten rule that says that different spelling means different person.

Nobody would really think that a spelling mistake that a typist at a City Registrar’s Office could someday make or break a person. This again would bring us back to the case of Maria Venus Raj who has wrong entries in her birth certificate. She lost her crown because of that. She’s just lucky that its election season and pa pogi politicians were there to defend her. The BPCI eventually gave her crown back on condition that she’ll be able to get a Philippine passport.

Wrong entries, misspelled names and family names in the birth certificates and any other official documents have been a burden to the victims. I call them victims because they were victims of the irresponsible clerks at the City Registrars Office. I haven’t heard anybody from the City Registrars being prosecuted of the mistakes that they made. There should be a penalty, a jail term preferably for those who made the lives of our kabayans unbearable.

Going back to my Mom, I told her to go back to NSO to correct the wrong entries. She can travel considering that the recently issued passport is valid. But it’s better to correct the mistake to make everything right.