Roperos: Getting a passport

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

ONE of the most sought after government service whose importance has tremendously increased is the grant of documents to citizens who want to travel abroad for various reasons, but mostly for employment.

Regardless of what their purpose of travel is, they need documentation. They need clearances from the police, and proof of citizenship to show their legitimacy as Filipinos by natural birth or by adoption. Finally, they need the most important document of all, the passport, which would affirm the applicant’s claim that he or she has the right to travel as a Filipino citizen, and to be treated and respected decently as a Filipino national should be.

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Thus yesterday, I accompanied two of my siblings to the passport office of the Foreign Affairs department, which has moved out of the Cebu City area to distant Mandaue City.

I cannot say if the move is fortunate or unfortunate for the clientele of the DFA’s passport office. But I recognize that the agency has become so crowded in its old office site at the vicinity of the Sto. Niño Basilica in downtown Cebu City.

I do think, though, that the said office is one of the busiest, if not the busiest we have right now, not just in terms of clientele but also in comparative daily incomes per capita. I have never seen so crowded an office as the DFA’s passport section.

Its management has changed hands a number of times now. And most of these officials, who I had the opportunity to talk with, told me the same complaint: the over-crowding due to the rise in number of passport applicants. I wrote about this a few years back, that the economic condition of our country has so much to do with it. Many of our employable but jobless manpower are forced to seek employment from other countries, and must have passports.

Consequently, because of this economic reality we are experiencing in our country, we find the passport office overcrowded as it has never been before. Yesterday, when I accompanied my two younger sisters, Delia and Lorna, who are visiting me in Cebu, and who hoped to also renew their passports here, found the new DFA office location at the Gaisano Mall building in Mandaue City as ove-crowded as it was in its earlier site.

The DFA passport office moved to the new site only last Dec. 12, in the hope that it would be in a more healthful and airy environment. Yes, it has a more decent and respectable place, truly worth the transfer, but we were still unable to go through the crowd. And we still have to return another day.

I think the office should have its own building in this part of the country. I think its income deserves it, really.