Starting this Wednesday, May 27, and until next Tuesday, June 2, the National Civil Registry will suspend civil registry and identification services. The decision is part of the measures adopted to guarantee the organization and development of the presidential elections scheduled for next May 31.
The measure includes all offices of the entity throughout Colombia, but in municipalities where there is no notary office with registry functions and in exceptional cases in which it is urgently necessary to carry out a registration in the civil status registry, such registration must be completed.
This is to guarantee the fundamental right to identification and prevent the registration of a death from becoming late, if applicable.
The National Civil Registry reported that the delivery of identity documents will remain available until Friday, May 29 at noon. Currently, a total of 295,321 citizenship ID cards remain pending to be claimed throughout the country.
Call for citizens to claim their ID cards
Likewise, it said that all civil registry and identification services will resume normally on Wednesday, June 3 during the usual public service hours, that is, from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
The entity called on Colombians to go to its offices throughout the country to claim their citizenship ID cards, since it is the only valid document to exercise the right to vote next May 31.
In the past legislative elections and in the interparty consultations, the National Civil Registry also suspended civil registry and identification services.
To claim an ID card at the Registry Office, citizens must verify whether the document is already available after having requested the duplicate and paid for the procedure; they may verify this through the following link. If it is already enabled, people must go to the same office where the request was made in order to claim their document.
It should be taken into account that office hours are Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Some offices provide service on Saturdays between 8:00 a.m. and 12:00 noon.
If a citizen does not claim their ID card on time within the legal period of one year, that document will be returned to the central office of the National Civil Registry to be destroyed.