Passports, airports and OFWs

A friend, Geronimo "Indian" Sy, wrote in his newspaper column and blog, entitled "Passport to hell". He wrote,

"The Philippine green passport is one of a kind – it is perhaps the last one on earth that requires human hands to write the passport details. ‘Scripting’ it is called in Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) parlance... Even African countries today use smart passports that are computerized and contain the biometrics of the passport holder. In the age of cutting edge technology, call centers and the push for information communications, ourpassport is an anomaly in the first order.

"...Everywhere else, airports are serving as gateways and symbols to a country’s progress. Here in the Philippines, our airports are a deterrence and a national shame. No need to ask any traveler, local or foreign. I wonder what our politicians feel when they travel – unless they get escorted direct to theVIP rooms. "

I immediately replied to Indian's posting and made the following comments:

1) I have also thought that the DFA should be more professional, more efficient.But since it's a government bureaucracy, an agency with monopoly power over issuance of passports, various forms of inefficiencies would come out. You have pointed out one of such inefficiency -- manual inputing of details (name, birthday, passport no., etc.) when it should be machine printed. Monopolists can always impose whatever inefficiencies, whatever price they will dictate, because consumers, the public, have nowhere else to go.

When I renewed my passport about 4 years ago, I brought my own pictures to save on expensive "passport photo" studios in the DFA premises. But the DFA guys are shrewed; they said the angle of pic, the background, the size, whatever, are not ok. I should get my photo at those studios nearby (something like P200 for 6 small pictures). I did so as I was told, just thinking how much commission those DFA guys get from those studios for compelling passport applicants to go to them.

2) On Phil. airports, government should get out in the business of building airports. Government's function is to stamp out criminals, drug smugglers, terrorists and bombers, other undesirables, who go through those airports. And to collect certain taxes from the flow of goods, services and people from those airports. Nothing more. If one consortium of businessmen build an international airport which many foreign airlines do not want to use because they're using an airport somewhere else, then that's the problem of that consortium.

But then again, government being a monopolist, it will always want to contaminate everyone else of its inefficiencies. Get bribes from contractors, from consortia/applicants, otherwise, no environmental clearance certificate (ECC), no business permit, no franchise, no airport. And that's precisely I think what happens to NAIA 3, or the absence of potential international airports in Cagayan Valley, in Northern Mindanao, in Western Visayas, especially nearby Boracay.

I saw Phuket international airport, a provincial airport compared to Bangkok international airport. But Phuket's I think is at least 2x the size of NAIA1, the main terminal. That's one reason why Phuket alone attracts hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of foreign tourists every year.

Btway, can passport issuance possibly be deregulated and privatized?
Accredited private travel agencies to be issued x number of passports by the DFA, and the travel agencies will print out and release the passports to Filipino nationals. If the issuing agency (DFA) can be inefficient and corrupt since it's a monopoly, then there will always be possibility that said agency will allow dubious people to have multiple passports. And I think ex-Comelec commissioner Garcillano is one good example of those dubious and cantankerous people who have more than 1 passport.

So, if the government monopoly is untrustworthy, could deregulation and privatization of passport issuance solve the problems (handwritten passports, slow and bureaucratic issuance, etc.)? Not entirely, I guess. Since the DFA will still have the final control on the number of passports to be printed, the database of people who have been issued passports, etc.

Maybe we just have to bear with government inefficiencies. For the next generation or two; or 3 maybe.

A friend, Cynthia Diaz, has this to add re. OFWs and passports:

"We hear on a daily basis about the problems that OFWs have overseas, but to tell you the truth, most OFWs are treated no more poorly in the countries they work in than they are during the process they have to go through to simply leave the Philippines to go to work for the first time. OFWs are overcharged in the fees that the employment agencies take from them and are mandated to have to use in order to get a job overseas. Technically I can't even bring my own neice to work for me without her having to pay an employment agency to "find" the job for her. The passport process is cumbersome and expensive with far too many bureaucrats involved. The POEA manages to milk as much as possible from every OFW before they are allowed to travel overseas and seems to see the OFWs they are supposed to protect as nothing more than "cash cows". Even when OFWs manage to get overseas, the services available from many of our embassies are marginal and seem to be bestowed only grudgingly by embassy workers who prefer to spend their time chatting with friends and texting."