The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) intensifies its campaign to bring passport and other consular services to distant cities and towns across the country with the arrival of its four new “Passport on Wheels” vans on Friday.
The vans would be rolled out on May 18 after equipment testing and personnel training, the DFA said in a statement.
To date, the agency has a total of eight vans for its “Passport on Wheels” program designed to meet the increasing demand for passport applications.
“DFA will continue to exert all efforts to make passport services accessible to our people wherever they are in the country,” Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano said.
The program, launched last January 15, has already been to 82 cities, municipalities, offices and to organizations from Luzon to Mindanao, the DFA said.
From its launch until April 30, the mobile passport initiative has already served a total of 94,422 passport applicants, the DFA added.
The DFA said each van is equipped with five data capturing machines that can process 500 daily applications. With the additional units, the number of passport applications that can be accommodated daily has increased by 4,000.
The agency is also aiming to add by June two “megavans” which can hold more machines in a bid to further increase DFA’s capacity to process passport applications.
Recently the DFA has faced scrutiny for its nonexistent online passport appointments slots for July to September this year.
Reports of syndicates selling passport appointments to applicants for a hefty price also plagued the agency, which it already denied.
READ: Passport applicants disappointed over nonexistent appointment slots /muf