Travel, recruitment agencies urge DFA to go after erring employees

The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) must go after its employees who are reportedly conniving with passport fixers that charge exorbitant fees to facilitate the early appointment and release of travel documents, travel and recruitment agencies urged on Monday. Travel agencies have bearing the brunt for some time now of the passport syndicates operating at the DFA Consular Affairs Office at Aseana building in Parañaque City, said Maria Paz Alberto, board member of both the Philippine Travel Agencies Association (PTAA) and the Pilipino Manpower Agencies Accredited to Taiwan (PILMAT) Alberto hailed last week’s apprehension of two DFA employees — reportedly caught conniving with a fixer on the early release of passports of the family of a Hong Kong-bound couple. That was “… a step in the right direction," she said, noting that the problem may by addressed with this development. “Hopefully… we will now be able to speed up the process of providing our clients [with] their passport needs," said Paz in a statement issued Monday. The Hong Kong-bound couple — interviewed by the DFA consular Office — supposedly got their passports earlier than the day these were supposed to be released. Bernielin Samson, according to PILMAT and the PTAA, admitted having paid a fixer P15,000 to have the five passports of her family released by the DFA Consular Affairs Office. Proliferation of fixers PILMAT has been asking the DFA Consular Office to address the proliferation of passport fixers at Aseana building, recruitment consultant Emmanuel Geslani said in a separate statement. “The recent apprehension of two senior employees of the Department of Foreign Affairs — after they were caught red-handed dealing with passport fixers — confirms what the recruitment industry has been reporting [in] the past year that there was [a] passport syndicate operating at the DFA Consular Affairs Office in cahoots with DFA personnel," Geslani said. According to the recruitment consultant, PILMAT in May 2010 raised the problem with the DFA after it has come to the association’s attention that fixers at the Consular Affairs Office in Aseana were charging applicants P5,000 to P10,000. The DFA last year denied such activities were happening at the consular Affairs Office. However, Foreign Affairs Assistant Secretary for Consular Affairs Jet Ledda confirmed last year that fixers were able to block the schedule of appointments for passport applicants — a situation that could only have been done in connivance with DFA employees who have access to the schedule. The backlog in the DFA’s online appointments had reached three months, prompting many applicants to turn to passport fixers to have their travel documents released as early as possible, Geslani said. The Consular Affairs Office processes 8,000 to 10,000 passport applications a day on top of the 3,000 to 5,000 passports travel agencies bring to the DFA for processing. — VS, GMA News