Starting today, Filipinos seeking to renew their expired passports can avail of a courier service to spare themselves the trouble of waiting in line with thousands of daily applicants at the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) in Pasay City.
Through Teleserv’s "DFA Passport Direct," passport holders can call the toll-free number from anywhere in the Philippines, 24-hours a day, seven days a week.
After getting the details, Teleserv will immediately send a courier to pick up the caller’s completed passport renewal form and other supporting documents. These are initially sorted by the company before submission to the DFA for processing.
The new passport is then delivered to the client a week after the pick-up date.
Those availing of Teleserv’s services will have to pay a total of P1,200, comprising the passport fee of P650 and a service charge of P550.
The cost, according to the DFA, is cheaper than that charged by travel agencies which may not be able to dispatch couriers to some areas of the country. Teleserv, it added, is likewise more reliable and secure.
Vice President and concurrent Foreign Affairs Secretary Teofisto Guingona said the new passport renewal system will help reduce the long lines at the DFA building by at least 40 percent.
"The DFA signed a contract with the courier service provider so that passports can be picked up from offices or residences, brought to the department for renewal and delivered back to applicants within seven working days," Guingona said.
At present, the department processes 3,500 applications per day, half of which are passport renewals.
The direct system, however, is limited to passport renewals since first-time applicants are still required by the DFA to make personal appearances.
Guingona said the department can hopefully accommodate 10,000 passport applications daily.
"The DFA passport Direct system will be a big help in achieving this goal," he said.
Guingona said he also plans to improve the security and integrity of the Philippine passport and visa by making them tamper-proof through the Machine Readable Passport/Visa Project scheduled for implementation this year.
"The project has already been evaluated. It will resolve much of the delay and uncertainties of passport issuance," he said.
Raffy David, marketing director of Teleserv, said the dropbox system being adopted by the DFA is similar to that being used by the US, Canadian, Italian and Dutch embassies for visa application.
Teleserv, a solutions company focused on effective system design and application of new call center technologies, also handles the National Statistics Office’s "Helpline Plus," a service that allows ordering of civil documents. – With Delon Porcalla