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Philippine embassy in the UAE releases 14,000 passports in Q1 of 2018

The Philippine Embassy in the UAE has announced that they have already released around 14,000 passports during the first quarter of 2018.

Vice Consul Anna Guerra said that these passports which were released already have a 10-year validity. “As of March 2018, the Philippine Embassy in the UAE has already processed around 14,000 passports with a 10 year validity. At present, we process around 200-250 passport per day,” said Guerra.

Earlier, the Philippine Embassy in the UAE also reminded OFWs to make sure that their passports are valid for at least 6 months if they plan to travel in other countries, except for the Philippines. The Embassy warned that those who travel with passports valid for less than 6 months may be barred from entering their country of destination and may even find it hard to return to the UAE.

Passport extension no longer honored

The Embassy furthers that Passport Extensions are “highly discouraged” except for emergency cases only as The International Civil Aviation Authority has implemented guidelines that would no longer honor passports with manual extension at any port of entry.

Scheduling for Appointments

In an earlier report of The Filipino Times on passport appointments, (link: Passport appointments) Guerra also clarified that if OFWs encounter the message “there is currently no availability for you to make an appointment through this schedule. Please check back again, later.”, this is not an error message but a notification that the slots are already full at the moment.

“We open appointments weekly and it’s really on a first-come-first-served basis. However, we open around 5-20 slots daily as soon as appointments are freed up for various reasons. If the appointments are already filled up for the week, we just have to wait for the following week for another batch of slots to be opened,” Guerra told The Filipino Times.

Guerra also advised those who have “extremely urgent” requirements to send an email to the embassy about their situation: “For extremely urgent situations, clients are advised to email [email protected]. They have to attach proof of urgency of request, so their case can be assessed properly and they can be given an earlier schedule.”

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