Some Tips in Applying or Renewing your Philippine Passport

[Manilana]

1. Beware of the passport fixers outside the DFA. Do not believ them even they are wearing ID`s with DFA logo, they are pretending, but the truth is they are looking for a prospect victims, their target are those new applicants especially those from the provinces. I have met a lady who was a victim of a fixer and she got rip-off of 3000 pesos. A lot of people will pretend to help you and will refer you to take a passport pictures in one of those Photo Studio outside the DFA, they will charge you 150 pesos for the pictures and 7 pesos for photocopy of the application form and 10 pesos for the glue.

2. The passport fee is only 500 pesos, 14 working days or 750 pesos if you wanted to get it after 7 working days. The application form is free of charge.
3. The photographs should be in royal blue background its not white anymore. It is a good idea to get your passport size photos in the proper photo studio so that you can have a nice picture of yourself instead of taking the photos outside the DFA that cost double and the print out is not really nice.
4. You can also use the courier service to deliver your passport to your house that cost 180 pesos so that you do not need to go to a long queue again to pick up your new passport which will take 2 to 3 hours. There are Courier Service Representative inside the DFA.
5. Bring some Identification Cards or ID`s, your birth certificate from the NSO for new applicants and 3 passport size photos. For renewal just bring your old passport and photocopy of the first page and the page with the last stamp of arrival.
6. Bring water, biscuits, umbrella, and ball pen. It is a very lonnnnnng queue and it will take 4 to 5 hours or more.
7. Only the applicant is allowed to enter the building.
8. If you are pregnant or you are applying for the kids passports with you just approach the staff to get you to front of the queue.
9. Do not worry if you forgot to get your documents photocopied, there s a Xerox machine inside the building.
10. They accept the application forms until 2pm only. So the earlier the better.
11. Bring wet tissue to clean your fingers after you got your finger printing.
12. Lastly, for those first timers, to get to the DFA, if you take the LRT just get off at the Libertad Station and you can take a tricycle from the station to the DFA.

[andypaul]

Great tips and very useful nice one

[Manilana]

Thanks Andypaul.
In addition to that, make sure to follow what it says on your Birth certificate, the name in your Birth certificate should be the same in your passport as I`ve seen one applicant in UKvac that has a problem with his passport because in his passport his name is different in his Birth Certificate. The UK vac will advice you to correct it and it will take time or will cause delay in your visa application.

[Tiggers0608]

wow regarding #2

2. The passport fee is only 500 pesos, 14 working days or 750 pesos if you wanted to get it after 7 working days. The application form is free of charge.

thats really quite a long time, before its like PHP500 only takes 7 days, and PHP750 only takes 2 working days.

maybe bcoz its the new kind of passport, maroon cover and the pic inside has a blue background, and they said its machine readable now means better not lost that anywhere bcoz its easy to get information about you and your identity will be easy to steal lol.

[Manilana]

Yes, Tigerrs,
It takes 7 working days and thats the quickiest processing for the new passport.
The first page where the details written is now look more impressive than the old passport, they scanned the photo on it and yes it is now machine readable.

[A_flyer]

You can find some more information on this new passport in the newspapers articles I highlight in this thread: http://filipinaroses.com/showthread.php?t=4247

Official informations (and forms to download) can be found here: http://www.dfa.gov.ph/consular/passport.htm

And yes the leadtime to get a passport increases due to the technology used in this new passport (it's the case also here in France since they add an electronic chip in our passport).
When I get it, they told me to avoid to forget it on a pocket and pass it in the washing machine as the chip may be destroyed!