Short answer. Yes. Under Section 8 of RA 9048, an indigent petitioner is exempt from paying the fee that the civil registrar or consul general may otherwise collect for accepting a petition to correct a clerical error or change a first name. The exemption applies to the fee for the petition itself.
What the law says
An indigent petitioner shall be exempt from the payment of the said fee.
RA 9048, Section 8 — Fees And Indigent Exemption. Read the full provision →
The rule on fees
Section 8 authorises the local civil registrar or the consul general to collect reasonable fees as a condition for accepting the petition. It then carves out an exception: An indigent petitioner shall be exempt from the payment of the said fee. So the ordinary petitioner pays; the indigent petitioner does not. The exemption is written into the law itself, which means it is a right, not a favour a registrar may withhold at will once indigency is shown.
What 'indigent' reaches
The article does not spell out the proof of indigency in its own text; that is left to the law's implementing rules and to the office receiving the petition. In practice you should expect to establish, by the documents that office requires, that you genuinely lack the means to pay. The exemption is personal to a qualifying petitioner and is not a blanket waiver for everyone who files. If your circumstances change, so may your entitlement.
What the exemption does not cover
The words cover the said fee — the fee for accepting the petition. They do not, by their terms, promise that every incidental cost of gathering your documents, securing certified copies, or publishing where a change of first name requires it, will also be free. Read the exemption for what it says: it removes the barrier of the petition fee for those who cannot pay. Because the details of proof and any related costs vary, it is sensible to ask the receiving office exactly what an indigent petitioner must submit before you file, so the exemption is honoured without delay.
Where the exemption fits
It also helps to place the exemption. This waiver is tied to the administrative petition filed with the civil registrar or the consul general — the route this law opens for a clerical correction or a change of first name — and it is not a general exemption from every fee in every proceeding elsewhere. Whether a petitioner qualifies as indigent is assessed by the office receiving the petition, on the documents its rules require, and that finding governs only the fee. It says nothing about whether the correction itself will be granted, which turns on separate requirements. If indigency is claimed but the supporting proof is incomplete, the office may ask for more before treating the fee as waived.
A later law expanded this process
The administrative correction process described here comes from Republic Act No. 9048. In 2012, Republic Act No. 10172 amended Republic Act No. 9048 to bring two further errors — a wrong day or month in the date of birth, and a wrong entry of sex — into the same local civil registrar route, without a court order. The procedure, the documents, and the officials described above still apply; Republic Act No. 10172 widened the kinds of error the process can fix rather than changing how it works. For a day, month, or sex correction, follow this same administrative route under the amended law.