Foreign Affairs Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano ordered printing contractor APO Production Unit to shoulder all the necessary expenses in improving the production and delivery of passports to the public even if the additional requirements are not stipulated in the 10-year-contract.
Cayetano announced that the DFA will disperse at least four mobile passport processing trucks in the National Capital Region to help “de-clog” its consular offices of the big volume of passport applicants.
In addition, Cayetano said the DFA is also waiting for the importation of new printing machines to backstop APO’s production plant in Batangas.
Even in the absence of explicit provisions in the DFA-APO passport production agreement signed in 2014, all these improvements and additional requirements to improve passport production shall be “at the expense of APO,” according to the Foreign Affairs chief.
“It should be at their expense… They make their money per passport. I’m not a businessman, I can’t answer for them. But as head of DFA, ang tingin ko, since you make your money per passport,” Cayetano said, adding that APO would still make money because of the sheer volume of passport demand and the year-on-year inflation.
“Yung truck wala sa kontrata nila iyon but they agreed. They agreed because we interpret it as duty n’yo ‘yan. Wala yung word na ‘they would not provide the truck.’ But to be able to cope with the volume, inherent sa kontrata yun,” he explained.
Likewise, the DFA secretary said they demanded APO to bring in more printing machines to cope with the increasing demand.
“They shouldn’t wait na umabot ng 24,000 or 25,000 a day bago nila sabihin na ‘Sir, three months bago (ma)import yung makina.’ Dapat ngayon pa lang nag i-import na dahil alam nila na pataas na. And I’m asking them to put printer hindi lang sa Batangas kundi dito din sa Manila para mabawasan din natin yung days (in the online system backlog),” Cayetano said.
DFA Undersecretary Jose Montales, meanwhile, admitted that they inherited the current passport problem from the previous administration.
However, Cayetano was cautious in echoing Montales’ statement, citing President Rodrigo Duterte’s earlier directive “not to cast blame on the past administration.”
“Let me be very frank. Serve the people don’t blame anyone. Don’t blame the past administration, don’t blame ganito. Narining nyo naman ang SONA (State of the Nation Address) niya (Duterte). Sabi niya huwag mag finger-point,” the secretary said.
While saying that APO is compliant with their production task, Cayetano, however, admitted that Malacanang is still conducting a “legal audit” on the DFA-APO contract following allegations of irregularities in certain provisions of the agreement.
“Performance audit yes, legal audit no. Because when I got in it was already in the office of Malacanang, with the office of the executive secretary so I did not ask to get it back. Sila ang gumagawa ng legal audit,” he said.
When asked about the current backlog in the online scheduling system, an APO official who was present in last Friday’s launching of the Passporting-On-Wheels (POW) at the DFA’s consular office in Pasay City, said, “it’s not ours, ask them (DFA).”
Criticisms that the agreement between the DFA and APO is dubious have surfaced last year especially after the latter entered into a joint venture with a private entity to undertake the printing of passports.
APO, which is operating under the PCOO, is described in the said agreement as the only Recognized Government Printers (RGP) that expressed willingness to print the e-passport.
The other two RGPs are the National Printing Office and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.
The agreement was made possible after the Department of Budget and Management issued a Multi-Year Obligational Authority to the DFA for the printing of e-passport for 10 years, covering the period of 2016-2026.
A check at its website showed that UGEC is a private printing company that specializes in packaging materials, ads and promos and collaterals. It has a huge printing facility in Dasmarinas, Cavite.