DFA adopts selective 4-day workweek

The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) adopted yesterday a four-day workweek except for vital frontline services such as passport processing and assistance to Filipinos in distress.

Foreign Affairs Undersecretary for Administration Franklin Ebdalin signed Memorandum Circular 14-05 containing the implementing rules for Administrative Order 117 adopting a four-day workweek at the DFA for nine weeks.

Ebdalin said Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo has approved the exemption of the Office of the Consular Affairs, the Regional Consular Offices and the Cash Division of the Office of Fiscal Management from the four-day workweek. The offices exempted from the four-day workweek are vital frontline offices that need to be available on a regular five-day workweek.

The Passport Office and Authentication Office at the DFA in Pasay City and Regional Consular Offices (RCO) in the provinces, including their respective cashiers, will continue to accept and process applications for passports and authentication of documents as well as issue these documents within the regular five-day workweek.

The assignment of personnel in the Office of the Undersecretary for Migrant Workers’ Affairs (OUMWA) and the Property Management and Transportation Division of the Office of Personnel and Administrative Services are on a rotation basis, as skeletal force and to provide logistic and technical support for the offices that will remain a regular workweek.

The OUMWA will continue to receive during the Fridays of April and May this year requests from the public for the so-called Assistance to Nationals, which pertain to support for OFWs or Filipino migrants who may be in distress while overseas.

Under the four-day workweek schedule, all DFA employees shall work for 10 hours per day from Monday to Thursday, except on holidays.

The implementing rules for AO117 will only apply to DFA offices in the country and not in Philippine embassies and consulates abroad.