Thousands of appointment slots for passport renewal and application are now open, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) announced on Thursday.
Assistant Secretary Frank Cimafranca of the Office of Consular Affairs said an additional 94,350 slots were opened from July to August, while thousands more will be opened tomorrow, August 25, for September appointments.
“The goal is to serve as many people as we can efficiently and effectively, so those slots had to be cleaned up. And that’s what we did,” Cimafranca said in a statement.
Of the slots opened last month, Cimafranca said they added 62,450 more after the DFA increased its quotas. The remaining 31,900 came from the cleaning up of bogus appointments created by unscrupulous individuals, he added.
Cimafranca said they also increased the number of personnel processing documents and applications.
“For example, in the Aseana office, the DFA’s main processing center for passports, the increase in personnel has resulted in a 73.6 percent increase in the capacity to accept and process daily appointments — from 1,900 to 3,300,” the DFA official said.