Secretary of Foreign Affairs Alan Cayetano has been forced to step up and deny accusations from the public that travel agencies are booking up passport slots and selling them for appointments.
“I’m not saying it’s impossible somebody is scamming people, and saying they have a slot. Anyone can say anything. What I’m saying is, they don’t have a slot, so they don’t have anything to sell to you,” Cayetano told reporters during the launch of the new 10-year passport at the Department of Foreign Consular Affairs’ (DFA) passport office in Manila last Friday.
One netizen pointed out on her Facebook page that when she checked the DFA website, all passport slots were full across the entire country.
Several netizens reported being offered appointment slots for thousands of pesos.
Netizen Glynn Manalo said, “these Agencies are making Filipino people suffer by paying 4k-7k to have Passports renewed or get a new one. and yet you allow that to happen?”
But Cayetano said that netizens should also bring evidence if they believe DFA employees are conniving with travel agencies to charge people for passport appointments.
“Give us the evidence or give us the lead,” Cayetano said.
He said the fully booked appointments were simply due to the volume of people applying for the passports.
He cited a 19.38 percent or 602,806 increase in passports produced from 2016 (3,110,114) to 2017 (3,712,920). Despite the increase, staff remained the same.
“More demand, more processing time, but the same number of people, same number of offices,” Cayetano said.
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