Questions

Still, must the time come that I need to have a brand new passport, I would should pay another P950. That could be procuring it two times, for a complete of P1,900. I don’t thoughts paying that a great deal if that is in reality essential. But the query is, why need to the DFA rush into canceling a passport that is still legitimate for the remainder of its 5-year validity?

How did the DFA arrive at a decision to problem Department Order No. 37-03, which empowered itself to cancel passports that continue to be “unclaimed after six months from date of issuance?” What occurred to a passport’s five-yr validity?

In posing these questions, I wonder if the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) also cancels the certificate of registration of latest and existing inventory agencies and partnerships.

I wish not. Otherwise, who might invest in this us of a? It could be higher for organizations to operate “underground” in preference to legalizing their operations.

Luckily for the DFA, I am now not in a position to question the cancellation of my new passport. I am additionally no longer applying for a new one in spite of the issuance of a certification that it has my new passport on its record.
Why doesn’t the DFA just launch it, besides, despite the fact that it has lapsed by way of extra than a yr once I claimed it recently.

Similarly situated

The questions are raised on this piece because I may not be by myself in this catch 22 situation. There may be others who’re similarly located and who, for loss of time, failed to pick up their passports within a “duration of six months from date of issuance.”

Of path, DFA officers could argue that new and renewed passports that stay unclaimed by their owners within their regulatory duration handiest litter their files.

What a way of reasoning for authorities people who are paid with the aid of the public to run the government effectively!
As I am made to apprehend, the DFA also runs its operations as funded by way of taxpayers’ money. Otherwise, how wouldn’t it pay for the salaries of its people, top officials, consuls and ambassadors? The department has many ambassadors and consuls on the “payroll of taxpayers.”

Despite the DFA’s use of the humans’s money, its officers are capable of justify their arbitrariness in canceling new and renewed passports.

Lesson

A lesson can be discovered, even though, from my experience in making use of for a brand new passport that I did not really need urgently.

How would the DFA’s arbitrariness have an effect on thousands of distant places Filipino employees whose passports are up for renewal? Would they have got P950 or P1,two hundred of their wallets to pay straight away for both a brand new or a renewed passport? If they manifest to be too terrible to cowl that fee, they would be forced to borrow from mortgage sharks who prey on the bad but who don’t pay taxes on their unreported taxable income?

Again, those questions aren’t necessarily addressed to Sen. Allan Peter Cayetano, who is our new DFA
secretary. Rather, they are meant handiest to remind DFA officials of the need to solve the troubles referred to above for the sake of the OFWs who make contributions an awful lot to the authorities’s foreign exchange buffers.

The government acknowledges OFWs as heroes because of their role in beefing up the government’s foreign reserves however simplest in public statements issued with the aid of its pinnacle officials. What are heroes for if they are most effective seen as such in press releases?

Finally, right here is the very last poser: Which must prevail? The DFA’s arbitrariness or a passport’s five-12 months validity? Just asking.