OFW group in Riyadh hits passport fees hike

A migrants’ rights group in Riyadh scored the Philippine Embassy there for the recent hike in passport fees after the implementation of the electronic passport (ePassport) program. Migrante-Middle East accused the Embassy of “overcharging" Filipino workers in Saudi Arabia, after increasing its passport services to as much as 150 Saudi riyals (about P1,850). “Instead of easing the burden of struggling OFWS and their families amid increases in prices of basic commodities and services, here comes the government increasing passport fees and overcharging OFWs," said Migrante regional coordinator John Leonard Monterona. According to the Embassy’s Web site, passport renewal now costs 240 riyals (P2,970) from 200 riyals (P2,470), while replacement of a lost passport is now pegged at 600 riyals (P7,430) from just 450 riyals (P5,570). The P500-increase for renewing passports can instead be used to buy a sack of rice for one-month consumption, Monterona said. “That’s too much for an OFW here who earns just P10,000-P12,000." However, Consul Romulo Victor Israel of the Embassy said in a separate interview that the increase in passport fees came from a directive by the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA). “If it were only up to us, of course we do not want the fees increased. But we can’t do anything about it because it was sanctioned by the DFA," Israel told GMANews.TV over the phone. He said the increase, according to the DFA, was due to the materials now being used for the ePassport. The new ePassport, according to Israel, uses a special kind of paper and ink, and also includes an embedded integrated circuit chip which contain’s the passport owner’s personal information. “Said fees will help defray the additional e-passport production costs, including the more expensive biometric passport booklets with advanced security features and consumables," a June 5 release posted on the Embassy’s website said. The DFA earlier justified the universal increase of about US$10 in passport services across all Philippine posts in the world, after Filipinos in Hong Kong criticized the hike. Meanwhile, Monterona said Migrante is conducting consultation among OFWs and organizations to protest the fee hikes. “We smell something fishy in the unjustified increase in fees since the machine-readable passport was implemented but immediately replaced with the ePassport selectively being issued in countries where there is a large concentration of OFWs," Monterona added. The DFA started issuing the ePassport in August 2009, two years after it started implementing machine-readable passports, in the Philippines and is gradually introducing the system to Philippine posts across the world. This was after the International Civil Aviations Organization (ICAO) gave countries until April 2010 to implement the ePassport, supposedly to combat fraud. - RJAB Jr/KBK, GMANews.TV