Presidential assistant seeks quicker passport processing in Cebu

Michael Lloyd Dino, presidential assistant for the Visayas (Photo from the Facebook page of the Office of the Presidential Assistant for the Visayas)

CEBU CITY — The Office of the Presidential Assistant for the Visayas is now looking into complaints about delays in the processing of passport applications at the Cebu office of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA).

In a letter date April 27, 2017, presidential assistant Michael Lloyd Dino directed Emmanuel Espineli, acting director of DFA Central Visayas, to furnish him with a situation report and recommendations on how to streamline the passport application processing – “with emphasis on providing appointment date that is most current, aimed at easing the burden of passport applicants, especially our poor Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs).”

“This will serve as the basis in reporting to the President about the current situation in passport processing in DFA Cebu Consular Office and our proposed solution thereto,” Dino said his letter.

A copy of Dino’s letter was furnished to Cebu Daily News on Friday afternoon.

Dino said in his letter that complaints on delays in the processing of passport applications at the DFA-Cebu Consular Office had reached his attention.

Applicants from Cebu who would want to process passports this month were told that appointment was available only in July or August, and that they would have to travel either to Dumaguete City in Negros Oriental or Tacloban City in Leyte just to have their passports processed in these satellite offices, where an appointment was not required, according to the letter.

This kind of a practice, Dino said, was contrary to the directive of President Rodrigo Duterte against queuing in government offices.

He said that assigning appointment dates three or four months from the date of filing the passport application was even much worst than half-day queuing. /atm