The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) has opened 800,000 passport appointment slots nationwide.
That’s what DFA Asec said. Henry Bensurto at the organizational meeting of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations this Thursday.
The chairperson of the committee, Sen Imee Marcos, criticized the DFA because the DFA website showed that March 2023 still has slots available.
But Bensurto replied that there are some places that have September and October slots.
There is also a passport on wheels and courtesy lanes for senior citizens, PWDs, and pregnant women.
The agency requested that temporary offsite passport sites be given a budget until December 2022, where 500 applications per day are processed at each site.
Marcos’ responded this is included in the budget given in the proposed New Philippine Passport Act.
Also being promoted is the availability of an emergency passport.
DFA opens 800K passport appointment slots
“In theory, as a matter of principle, there may be some need for an emergency passport, regarding emergency or special cases. For example, a person whose relative died and will not have time to apply for ordinary passport but needs to go to a certain place,” said Bensurto.
“A person who has to be somewhere and passport has lost. In those instances, it takes a 15-day clearing period. If circumstances justify it, we have to have some leeway to have personal travel but with some restrictions. But there are possible abuses thats why we are willing to work with staff. Cases where issued will have some safety nets or safeguards to prevent abuse.”
DFA is also looking into having a mobile application for passport application.
Regarding the proposal regarding the lifetime validity of the passport, the DFA does not agree with it, and it should only be valid for 10 years.
“No country at the moment doing that practice. We did inquiries with other governments on validity no countries thinking along those lines. I wanted to point out the difficulty with lifetime validity,” said Bensurto.
“In consideration of the limited durability of the document, and changing appearances of document holder, a validity of 10 years is recommended.”
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