Going somewhere?

You need to renew your passport six months before the expiry date (as for many countries this is a requirement to let you in), so you decide to go online for an appointment to make sure you can get things done in a month or so. Well it seems a lot of people had the same idea but they found out that there are no available slots for appointments until March 31, 2018 and the system does not offer any slots for April 2018 so far. So just imagine you are an OFW in the country for a month or two and you need to renew your passport before you go back? I don’t know if the DFA has a secret password that gets you inside their passport renewal system by simply saying “OFW Ako.” Luckily, Senior Citizens don’t need to make an appointment and can just walk or wheel themselves in and apply or renew their passport.

Unfortunately for the DFA, there are now rumors or tips that desperate applicants can “search” for people who make bulk appointments and buy an appointment slot from them. To be fair the DFA website does say: “The DFA discourages applicants from securing online appointments through fixers. Please be warned that dealing with fixers is at your own risk and expense.”

Frankly I don’t want to believe that this is possible but then even the police use the term “Inside job” for such scams. What I find unacceptable in this situation is that the DFA makes the effort to warn the public about finding illegal remedies to a problem that should be addressed by the DFA because securing or renewing passports is their requirement as well as their mandate and responsibility. There is nothing new about the matter. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to estimate how much increase there will be in the demand for passports. Ironically, we are not even talking about the actual manufacture of passports but merely appointment slots online so people can submit their documents and applications in order to get or renew their passport! At the very least, the DFA should explain or be transparent as to why they don’t have enough slots for appointments or personnel to handle the volume. Travel abroad is no longer the exclusive privilege of the rich and powerful. In case some snob at the DFA has not realized it, travel for business, work or tourism is now part of life for ordinary Filipinos.

I find this sad and unfortunate because all my experiences with the DFA have been pleasant, professional and positive. The last time I applied for a passport it only took 45 minutes and my passport was delivered on schedule through courier. The same thing happened when my daughter applied for her passport and although there were hundreds of people at the Mega Mall processing center of the DFA, everything was also done in an hour and the passport arrived in two weeks. Whether it is a budgetary or personnel deficit, I pray that Foreign Affairs Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano can look into the matter and actually get the process moving.

* * * How over-priced are food, water and necessities when sold at the various bus, air and shipping terminals? If you happen to be a traveler who gets stuck at a terminal due to weather or operational delay, having to pay twice to three times the normal price for food, drinks and necessities inside terminals becomes a case of adding insult to the injury of inconvenience.

We all assume that over inflated pricing is normal because those outlets or locators have to pay a high rent to the terminal operators which is usually the Republic of the Philippines. But does the government charge higher rates than Malls or Business Centers? I doubt it. In fact I know a businessman who jumps at every chance to rent space at airport terminals because the overhead costs is so much cheaper than renting inside malls. I can understand that prices would be much higher if we were talking about restaurants or food chains or souvenir shops, but why should the price of bottled water or packed foods that you buy from a kiosk and take away have to be 2 to 3 times more expensive than in a mall or convenience store chain? Perhaps nobody ever pointed this out, but now I’m doing it because it is so unkind and uncompassionate to profit from the misery of others who are traveling on a limited budget, stuck in the terminal and forced to “feed” on tap water! I found it so disturbing to watch ordinary people suffering such situations during the holidays and series of typhoons that disrupted travel on land, sea and air.

It was bad enough that a couple of government officials at the DOTr washed their hands of the responsibility to provide aid or comfort to the afflicted, worse when they passed the blame to other agencies, but now that we know the problems, do we wait once again for the same problem to happen again? I hope that Secretary Ramon Lopez could look into the matter since the people at the Department of Trade and Industry are a lot more protective of consumers than the DOTr people are about travelers!

* * * Will the TRAIN or Tax Reform program get derailed? Why is the Philhealth proposal to increase contributions beginning to find opposition in media and the general public? As usual it is because the proponents or authors of such programs never think in terms of Communications and Public Information. The proposed increases on Philhealth contributions are not huge and generally affordable, but my friend Secretary Francisco Duque failed to realize that the reason focus is on the increase is because the Philhealth officials both past and present have failed to highlight, share or promote the various benefits that many members have received or experienced. The same goes for the TRAIN law or program. We are only now beginning to see, read or hear parts and aspects of the TRAIN law that the public did not know of. What’s worse is we learn about it from Facebook not Government!

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