DFA opens consular office in Cavite

DASMARIǸAS CITY, Cavite - Residents of the province do not need to travel to Manila for passport services anymore, as the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) opened its latest consular office (CO) here on Monday.

Foreign Affairs Acting Secretary Brigido DJ Dulay said the DFA in Dasmariǹas forms part of its efforts to provide convenience to

Filipinos in need of consular services and also help augment the passport processing needs.

“If you check the passport appointment system, it’s all green now. This DFA CO Dasmariǹas target to process some 7,000 passports monthly,” Dulay said.

The consular office is located on the second level of SM City Dasmariñas.

Vice Mayor Raul Rex Mangubat, welcomed the new office as “beneficial for all” development, highlighting that the Philippines is one of the nations with the highest population of overseas workers.

“If they are overseas workers, they will definitely need passports, so we give our full support to the national government for this project,” he said.

Executive Order 45 dated Oct. 20, 2017 provides for the reorganization of the field offices of the Office of Consular Affairs of the DFA.

DFA CO Dasmariǹas is the 35th Consular Office to be established in the Philippines and the 29th Consular Office to be established outside the National Capital

Region (NCR).

Its establishment is in accordance with the Duterte administration’s goal of bringing the government services closer to the people and in promoting a peoplecentered, clean, efficient and effective governance, including seamless service delivery.

It shall perform consular services, such as issuance of passports to Filipino nationals, provide authentication services, issue verification for consular record documents and accept applications for delayed registration of report of birth, marriage or death abroad and other civil registry documents in coordination with relevant Philippine Foreign Service Posts; provide assistanceto-nationals (ATN) services to Filipinos, and other functions that may be assigned by the DFA-Office of Consular Affairs (OCA) in accordance with existing law, rules and regulations.

The DFA’s Dasmariǹas CO is the eighth mallbased CO opened under the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) Program of the agency with SM Supermalls. (PNA)