Thursday, February 07, 2008 Public bewails delays in release of machine-readable passports By Albert B. Lacanlale
CITY OF SAN FERNANDO -- Mark Philip Natividad was about to leave for a promising work abroad to help his family meet ends, but as of Wednesday his passport had not been released by the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA).
A native of Colgante, Apalit, Natividad is one of the many clients who are fuming mad against the DFA, as their new passports, which should have been released from February 1 to 5, had not been delivered by the agency.
A technical glitch on machines that are supposed to produce machine-readable passports (MRPP) reportedly caused the delay in the release of passports for applications approved since not later than January 24.
Natividad feared that his supposed employer in Cambodia might opt to cancel his contract if he could not take a flight to the foreign country on Thursday.
This is the same problem for Dondon Samaniego, 27, who hails from Hermosa, Bataan.
Everyday since February 1, the date for the release of his new passport -- also the machine-readable type -- Samaniego painstakingly commuted from his hometown to the DFA Consular Office in Clark Freeport hoping to get hold of the blue booklet that would take him to Dammam, Saudi Arabia.
Samaniego has filed for a renewal of his passport on January 23 and was supposed to be at the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) last Wednesday afternoon for a pre-departure procedure.
However, he was not able to go to the POEA, as his passport has yet to be released.
Samaniego was also supposed to go back to his work of four years to Saudi Arabia.
Everyday, the DFA Consular Office in Clark receives similar complaints since the implementation of the MRPP, the new passport that can be electronically scanned and authenticated.
About five percent of the passports due for release as February 1 have yet to be delivered to the Clark consular office from the DFA head office in Manila, where the new passports are being produced.
Natividad and Samaniego said they did not find problem in the processing of their documents so they did expect to encounter the problem in securing their MRPP.
Obviously, they were both wrong. And so were the others who trooped to Clark with prayers to be issued their new passports.
From an average of 600 to 700 passports released everyday by the Clark consular office for the old manually encoded passports, their total daily release for the MRPP has dwindled to around 400 passports.
The new passports also required longer working time at 15 working days for "Regular" and six working days for "Overtime." Processing time for the old passports was only at 10 working days and three working days for regular and overtime, respectively.
DFA employees, sources said, have been hearing unkind words from clients who expected their passports to be issued on the day when their documents were supposed to be released.
Some applicants even asked for refund of their payments since the DFA did not meet its own deadline.
"We want to know what the real problem is, when our passports will be released so we'll not spend hard-earned money for our fares," the applicants said.
