A group of recruitment agencies criticized the government’s delay in securing an appointment with the Consular Affairs Department of the Department of Foreign Affairs which takes more than three months, which it claimed resulted in inconvenience and loss of job opportunities to many overseas Filipino workers.
Recruitment consultant Emmanuel Geslani said that the appointment system has rendered useless the efforts of the recruitment industry in providing jobs for hundreds of thousands of new hires for their job orders because it takes more than three months to get an appointment.
“Many employers have canceled the contracts as the new workers have given up on long processing time in acquiring the passport,” he said.
He added that the overseas recruitment industry have been at loggerheads with officials of Consular Affairs and withdrew an agreement with the Federation of Manpower Exporters Inc. allowing the walk-in processing of new overseas applicants with the presentation of verified job orders from the POEA.
“This is the existing problem resulting to loss of their jobs because their visas expire before they can get a new passport,” he said.
POEA statistics show that there are 300,000 new hires each year that require new passports aside from the millions of OFWs who come home for their vacations to renew their contracts.
Geslani said the delay has a serious effect in the aspirations of hundreds of thousands of Filipinos who are seeking better opportunities abroad in the absence of decent jobs in the country.
“There is also a domino effect to the recruitment agencies that despite the high demand for HSWs, the lack of qualified OFWs with passports is detrimental to their companies.”
The recruitment agency has repeatedly requested the DFA to prioritize passport processing of OFWs as this is the sector that continues to support the national economy.
