PHL Consulate General in Dubai to stop extending expiring passports starting Jan. 1

Starting January 1, 2014, Philippine officials in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will stop extending expired or soon-to-expire passports except only in emergency cases.

The Philippine Consulate General in Dubai said this aims to enforce discipline among Filipino expatriates in Dubai, according to a report on Gulf News.

“We need to discipline our people. If they abide by rules of other embassies, all the more should they abide by our country’s rules. We will be firm in implementing these reforms by next year,” Gulf News quoted Consul General Frank Cimafranca as saying Wednesday.

Filipinos in Dubai were encouraged to apply for passport renewal as early as one year before their passport’s expiry to avoid inconvenience.

In stating the no-extension rule, Cimafranca cited the Department of Foreign Affairs' regulations that invalid Philippine passports can be extended only in emergency cases like death in the family or a medical emergency.

But in Dubai, the Gulf News report quoted officials as saying many passport extensions are made because Filipinos “forget to check the validity of their passports” before traveling.

In some cases, they put off renewing their passports until the last minute.

Consul Giovanni Palec said that while the consulate still accommodates requests for extending passports, they had been "under fire" from authorities in Manila.
 
An earlier Gulf News report quoted Cimafranca as saying more than half of the daily passport renewals are "last-minute" applications.

But after getting an extension, applicants often forget to claim the new passports from the consulate. Due to this, hundreds of unclaimed passports have been canceled for the past two years. — KBK, GMA News