The Philippine Embassy has 17 hotlines for various inquiries,
apparently unbeknownst to most overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) who keep
using the trunk line for their inquiries, thereby causing a heavy traffic of
incoming calls and in effect, resulting to a system overload.
In light of this, the embassy has released a directory of these hotlines, which are
actually already listed on its website, in the hope that it could better respond to
the needs of its constituents.
In a phone interview from Abu Dhabi, Ambassador Constancio R. Vingno, Jr.
lamented that this Catch 22 situation would have been eased if only OFWs
would check the embassy’s website at www.abudhabipe.dfa.gov.ph/ to get the
number corresponding to their concerns.
“Meron kaming tatlong emergency hotlines na kinuha para sa 24/7 operation.
Hindi naman nila tinatawagan.” Vingno said. “Tumatawag sila sa trunk line, eh
most of the time, iisa ang operator,” he added.
According to Vingno, the trunk line has four phones handled by the lone
operator who, ideally, should just be transferring the calls to the desired office,
but usually ends up answering queries from the person on the other end because
the concerned staff he needed to talk to is busy attending to a queue of OFWs.
“Itra-transfer sa person concerned yung call, eh yung pagta-transferan may 10
nakapila, minsan 20 dun sa window nya. ‘Pag ibinigay sa kanya yung phone
call, magagalit yung mga nakapila, sasabihin oras ng trabaho nasa telepono.
Pag di naman kakausapin na lang ng operator yung tawag, magagalit din yung
nasa linya, sasabihin walang sumasagot sa kanya. It’s a Catch 22,” Vingno said.
“Kaya ‘wag naman silang magtaka. Kapag walang sumasagot, that means may
kausap, kasi di pwedeng istorbuhin yung nasa window,” he added.
Another embassy official said that making matters worse are calls made by
those who could have just easily checked the website for their inquiries. “Meron
pa ngang tatawag, itatanong lang pala kung saan nanduon ang embahada,” the
official said.
Catch 22 is a difficult situation from which there is no immediate solution
because of conflicting conditions. (Jojo Dass)
