The Palace on Monday said it was too “cumbersome” for people renewing their passports to submit original birth certificates after the Department of Foreign Affairs made this a requirement because a previous contractor had made off with their data.
“Applicants should not be burdened by submitting original copies of their certificates of live birth… which requires another application process before the Philippine Statistics Authority, to renew their passports just because the producer lost their relevant data,” Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo said in a statement.
Panelo said that the submission of the old or current passport, which the applicant seeks to renew “should suffice for the purpose.”
“The ongoing practice is not only cumbersome to everyone affected but is a form of red tape, which this administration frowns upon and will not tolerate,” he added.
Panelo also said the loss of data was a “serious and grave matter” and assured the public that the National Privacy Commission is determining whether there were any violations to the Data Privacy Act 2012.
READ: DFA allays fears over data 'theft'
Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. last week said the French company that had been contracted to produce passports had “made off” with the data when its services were terminated, and that the DFA needed to rebuild its database.
Before the current contract with APO Production Unit Inc., passports were printed by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, through the French firm Francois-Charles Oberthur Fiduciare.
Locsin hinted that a crooked passport deal closed during the Aquino administration was to blame for the passport mess.
Former DFA chief Perfecto Yasay, however, said Locsin might have been misinformed, and that no data had been stolen. He said the real issue was that APO had subcontracted the job to United Graphic Expression Corp. without a public bidding, which is illegal.
Asked if President Rodrigo Duterte was concerned about the passport mess, Panelo said “of course.”
“He doesn’t want these birth certificates being lost, even without him saying it, it should not have happened,” he added.
On Monday, Locsin said the data “is possibly hopelessly corrupted and at any rate inaccessible now or we are being lied to as usual.”
In 2015, DFA entered into a deal with APO despite its existing contract with the French contractor.
Oberthur, Locsin said, deposited the data in a warehouse in Lipa “out of irritation” and refused to give the access code so it could now be “corrupted.”
Locsin, in a separate tweet on Sunday, vowed to unmask those behind the passport mess, whom he said will launch a social media campaign against him.
“Apparently the mess crosses partisan lines,” he added.
READ: Passport data loss: Locsin vows to unmask culprits, hits contractor
The Commission on Human Rights on Monday welcomed the investigation launched by the National Privacy Commission.
“CHR reiterates the importance of the right to privacy in preserving human dignity as stated in various human rights documents, including the 1987 Philippine Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Data Privacy Act of 2012,” Jacqueline de Guia, CHR spokesperson, said.
“To this end, we urge the government to identify accountabilities and determine all applicable penalties, as determined by our laws, in preserving the rights of all concerned and in the interest of national security,” she added. With Rio N. Araja, Francisco Tuyay and PNA