Passport applicants who fail to show up on their appointment will be barred from reapplying for 30 days starting next month, said Foreign Affairs Secretary Jose Rene Almendras.
Almendras lamented that the practice of disregarding the schedule given to applicants by the DFA’s consular division has resulted in a two-month waiting period for hundreds of applicants.
“People complain they have to wait two months to be interviewed. Statistics showed that 47 percent of people who applied for appointment do not show up,” the secretary said.
“They just apply and don’t come back so starting June 1, if you do not show up for your appointment you’re going to be set aside for at least a month. You do not need to apply for a new slot,” he said.
As there is no fee for passport application reservations, Almendras observed that many Filipinos take their slots for granted because they could easily reschedule a new one.
The DFA receives at least 15,000 passport applications daily.
Meanwhile, Almendras acknowledged that apart from problems with passport reservations, the DFA was experiencing challenges in cutting down the processing time, which normally takes two and a half hours.
He asked Filipinos to be patient as the DFA is transitioning to a new system to accommodate the huge volume of passport applications.
Another cause of delay is the stringent security check that applicants have to go through due to thousands of cases of identity fraud encountered by the department.
“We have a more intensive screening happening. We have to double check. We receive 15,000 applications per day and about 4,000 applications are bumped off. We have to investigate, we have to protect the integrity of the passport,” Almendras said. “The intention is to make the Philippine passport a really respectable identification and that means security checks left and right.”
Amid all these concerns, he vowed to reduce the processing time for application.
“The fastest we have done is 20 minutes and the longest is one hour and 42 minutes and I’m still targeting a one-hour turnaround time. From the time you enter our office, processing should take one hour’s time,” he said.