BAGUIO CITY – The Cordillera office of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) belied allegations of favorisitism and discrimination among applicants for the issuance of passports in its regional consular office based at the SM City Baguio.
Derico B. Derupe, DFA-CAR officer-in-charge, explained that the regional consular office has no direct hand in the scheduling of online appointments considering that the same is done in its central office while there are available courtesy lanes for elected officials, senior citizens, persons with disabilities (PWDs), Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) and those who are visibly pregnant.
Derupe, together with other DFA-CAR officers, appeared before the regular session of the local legislative body to educate local legislators on the processing of passports which is lodged with the agency.
He assured local legislators that he will bring to the attention of the DFA central office the problem raised by city officials that there are some passport applicants from Region I and II who process their online appointments in the DFA-CAR which is supposed to be not the case thereby depriving other passport applicants from the Cordillera the chance to be given attention by the agency.
On the treatment of endorsements issued by local officials to certain passport applicants, the DFA-CAR official pointed out some of those given endorsements do not actually need the passports but they just want to have in their possession such document for whatever personal requirements.
Derupe explained that regular passport applicants who have appointments are attended by DFA-CAR officials and employees within 3-5 minutes while those who have endorsements and come in as walk-in applicants are attended for a maximum of 10 minutes that often result to the non-attendance of other online passport applicants who have been waiting for their turn to be attended.
According to him, based on the interviews they have conducted to those accompanying senior citizens, PWDs, among others availing of the courtesy lane, some of them are not actually related to the passport applicants because they simply want to ride on the granted privilege to those who need the same while others simply want to have their passports the soonest.
Durepe apologized to local officials if there were previous incidents that transpired wherein their endorsements were still subjected to stringent verification process because their actions are actually intended to protect the integrity and credibility of the one issuing the endorsements so as not to be taken advantage by unscrupulous passport applicants wanting to get their passports the easiest way they could.
He admitted that to date, the agency is exceeding its prescribed quota of passport applicants but they are doing their best to attend to their needs during the day so that they will not be forced to return to the DFA-CAR to continue processing their passport applications the next day.
By Dexter A. See
