DFA: No more travel agencies in passport appointment slots

Travel agencies are no longer entitled to facilitate passport application and renewal appointment slots at the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) consular offices.

The decision was reached in a bid to make more appointment slots for passport applications available to the public.

94,350 additional slots were opened from July to August, while 86,889 have been added so far for September.

Ricarte B. Abejuela III, Acting Director of the Passport Division of the Office of Consular Affairs, said that with the DFA's new policy, clients of travel agencies should undergo the same process all other applicants undergo when applying for or renewing a passport.

Courtesy lane retrictions Last August 1, DFA employees themselves made adjustments after their privilege to use the courtesy lane was restricted.

Under the new system, only immediate family members of DFA employees parents, spouse, children, siblings, grandparents, grandchildren and parents-in-law - will be granted access to the DFA's express lanes.

The significant reduction in the daily courtesy lane slots reserved for the DFA employees has resulted in a further increase in daily slots for applicants who should be entitled to the courtesy lane.

With the newly freed up courtesy lane slots, Abejuela said the DFA was also able to expand the definition of OFWs who can avail of the courtesy lane.

The privilege can now be enjoyed by OFWs who are working abroad for the first time. Zero backlog Aside from these reforms, the DFA has also made available thousands of appointment slots after the agency increased the consular offices’ appointment quotas and cleaned up bogus appointments created by unscrupulous individuals.

The DFA also successfully brought down to zero the backlog of 33,000 applications pending investigation under the Automated Fingerprint Identification System.

These moves to facilitate faster processing of passports are being done even as a thorough review of the contract entered into by the DFA and state owned printing firm APO Production Unit over the manufacture of Philippine electronic-passports is still being undertaken.