Amid the rising demand for Philippine passports during the pandemic, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) announced on Monday it would open five application sites in five malls in Metro Manila.
Brigido Dulay, undersecretary for Civilian Security and Consular Affairs, said these locations are: SM Mall of Asia, SM North EDSA, SM Aura, Robinson’s Place Las Piñas, and Robinson’s Place Magnolia.
He said applicants may file via online at www.passport.gov.phl, adding the temporary passport venues are now open to operations.
The DFA official said plans are afoot to open sites outside of the National Capital Region (NCR). However, he said the DFA is still considering where to locate them, how to provide the equipment, and the personnel who would be manning these sites.
“This will resolve the current backlog and address the high demand for passports,” Dulay said during an online news briefing, adding that Foreign Affairs Secretary, Teodoro Locsin Jr. gave him the marching order to expedite the processing of Filipino passports despite the pandemic.
The five sites in Metro Manila are open from Monday to Saturday and would be active until September 2021.
Each of the sites has the capacity to accept 500 applicants daily, “on top of the regular appointments slots at the Aseana and all Consular Offices all over the Philippines,” Dulay said.
He revealed that in total the DFA processes about 177,500 passports daily, coming from all consular offices across the country.
The DFA expects that by the end of September, it would have processed about 77,500 applicants for the newly established sites.
Dulay said the pandemic has slowed down the passport application and processing worldwide. He said the adoption of quarantine measures in the NCR Plus areas has halved the number of DFA personnel going to their respective offices.
Before the pandemic, the DFA has been processing 13,000 passport applications a day, but due to government health restrictions, the number of applications has been halved. Dulay said the department had to reduce its work force and cut the capacity of walk-in applicants inside the consular offices.
Currently, the DFA can only accommodate 6,167 slots a day, he said.
“This is also true in our embassies abroad, where each host country has its own protocol that the DFA personnel must follow.”
Dulay said there was a huge backlog in all Consular Offices, especially in places like Los Angeles and San Francisco, where many Filipino-American citizens have applied for dual citizenship to go around the existing protocols that disallows foreigners from coming into the country for fear of importing the new Covid-variants
“The root of the backlog is the pandemic, because embassies and consulates are also visitors and our people must follow the host country’s protocols. If they say lockdown, then we’re helpless.”
For those with urgent need to travel like children, persons with disabilities, pregnant women, OFW and the like, Dulay advised the public, to e-mail them, while the alternative for those with urgent request can e-mail at [email protected]. to request for a slot.
Undersecretary Dulay appealed to the public to wait for the situation to stabilize if there’s no urgent need to travel to free up more slots.
Dulay discouraged the public to avoid getting the services of travel agencies or those presenting themselves to have connections with the DFA, saying “applying for appointment is free, but they have to go to legal and official web site.”
He said the DFA is aware of groups taking advantage of the public promising to expedite their applications for a fee, but warned that these syndicates are hard to trace because they conduct their modus online and are difficult to trace.
DFA statistics showed that the demand for passport has been growing for the past two years, Dulay said, but added that they expect a downturn soon, “since we have issued a 10-year passport, while the demand for renewal of those with shorter terms would soon disappear.
The passports at Aseana and the NCR would be available after 12 working days from the time of application, while the “turnaround” time in the provinces would be a bit longer because the DFA relies on local air transportation to bring the passports from Manila, which are sometimes delayed due to bad weather.
For those paying online, “the slots are automatic, in a few minutes it’s finish all the way to the appointment,”Dulay said, but for those whose payments have to be confirmed, the slots are available “as soon as the applicants are able to complete the requirements, or less than an hour,” Dulay said.