The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) follows President Rodrigo Duterte’s marching orders to improve services for overseas Filipino workers (OFWs).
Aside from opening an additional 1,200 passport application and renewal slots, a courtesy lane will be opened for Filipinos eyeing to work abroad for the first time, DFA announced on Monday, September 4.
Before this, only relatives of DFA employees and returning OFWs were allowed to be accommodated at the express lanes.
“Our policy now is that no OFW should be left without a job just because he couldn’t get a passport,” Inquirer quotes Abejuela as saying.
Aside from first-time OFWs, senior citizens, persons with disabilities, pregnant women, solo parents, and children seven years and below are entitled to the express lane, according to Ricarte Abejuela III, acting director of the Passport Division of the Office of Consular Affairs.
Under the new policy, clients of travel agencies and distant relatives and friends of DFA employees will now undergo the same process as everyone else when applying for passports.
Source: Inquirer
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DFA takes measures to speed up passport appointment system
More Filipinos will soon be able to expedite their passport application and renewal as the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) started to implement reforms in the appointment system.
According to Assistant Secretary Frank Cimafranca of the Office of Consular Affairs, DFA increased consular offices’ appointment quotas by employing more staffs and has invalidated bogus appointments to cater more passport applicants in no time.
Cimafranca said DFA opened a total of 94,350 appointment slots from July to August—62,450 were added due to the increase in appointment quotas, while 31,900 came from cleaning up of fictitious appointments.
“The goal is to serve as many people as we can efficiently and effectively, so those slots had to be cleaned up. And that’s what we did,” Cimafranca said in a statement.
The increase in personnel also allowed DFA to reschedule 900 appointments to earlier dates.
In DFA’s Aseana office alone, the capacity to accept and process daily appointments increased from 1,900 to 3,300.
DFA Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano earlier vowed to revoke the passport appointment system to speed up the process in applying for passports.
DFA opens 1,200 new passport appointment slots
The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) announced on Monday a new passport appointment policy that targets to provide an easier passport application and renewal process for more Filipinos.
Appointment slots for passport application and renewal initially reserved for its employees and travel agencies will be redistributed to the public starting August 1, 2017.
According to Ricarte Abejuela III, acting director of the Passport Division of the Office of Consular Affairs, OFWs, senior citizens, persons with disabilities, pregnant women, solo parents, and children seven years and below are entitled to the express lane, easing the passport application process especially for first time OFWs.
“Our policy now is that no OFW should be left without a job just because he couldn’t get a passport,” Inquirer quotes Abejuela as saying.
The Filipino Times previously reported that DFA opened a total of 94,350 appointment slots from July to August—62,450 were added due to the increase in appointment quotas, while 31,900 came from cleaning up of fictitious appointments.
