The Department of Foreign Affairs opened 100,000 passport appointment slots for February to May since 1 p.m today January 23rd.
“Every day, we will be putting more slots so that all of you who want to travel during the summer will not be hampered for lacking passport,” Foreign Affairs Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano said
The general public can access the slots by visiting and scheduling appointment at https://passport.gov.ph.
Recently, the DFA cancelled more than 50,000 bogus appointments, enabling the opening of more passport appointment slots to the public.
Filipinos have been complaining about the difficulty of securing a schedule in the department’s online passport appointment system.
In early January, Filipinos urged the DFA to fix their system because passport appointment slots online are fully booked until March.
DFA promised that they will look for feasible solutions to fix the problem.
Aside from the additional appointment slots, Cayetano also said that one of the solutions will be the opening of new DFA offices in the following places this year:
- San Nicolas, Ilocos North
- Santiago, Isabela
- Malolos or Meycauayan, Bulacan
- Calamba or San Pablo City, Laguna
- Dasmariñas City, Cavite
- Antipolo, Rizal
- Oroquieta City or Ozamis City, Misamis Occidental
- Tagum, Davao del Norte
Aside from new offices, four mobile passport processing units or “passport-on-wheels” will also make rounds to process additional passports every day.
The first Passport-On-Wheels was already launched at Manila City Hall last week.
The DFA currently processes 9,000 passports per day, but with the new offices and passport processing units, that will increase to 15,000.