Thousands of appointment slots are now available to those who wish to apply for and renew their passports, after the Department of Foreign Affairs implemented sweeping reforms.
Assistant Secretary Frank Cimafranca of the Office of Consular Affairs said an additional 94,350 slots were opened from July to August, while thousands more will be opened tomorrow, Aug. 25, for September appointments.
According to Cimafranca, of the slots opened last month, the 62,450 additional slots were made available after the DFA increased the consular offices’ appointment quotas, while the remaining 31,900 came from the cleaning up of bogus appointments created by unscrupulous individuals.
“The goal is to serve as many people as we can efficiently and effectively, so those slots had to be cleaned up. And that’s what we did,” he said.
He said the increase in additional slots has been complemented by an increase in personnel in charge of processing documents.
For example, in the Aseana office, the DFA’s main processing center for passports, he said the increase in personnel has resulted in a 73.6 percent increase in the capacity to accept and process daily appointments—from 1,900 to 3,300.
The increase in personnel has also led to the moving up to earlier dates of about 900 appointments, and has resulted in the reduction of suspended applications under investigation—from 33,000 on Aug. 2 to zero (0) as of Aug. 18, Cimafranca said.
“Let’s take one step at a time. But so far, so good,” he added.
To prevent the unnecessary use of slots, Cimafranca issued the reminder that senior citizens, persons with disabilities, solo parents, pregnant women and minors (seven years old and below) may just walk in without prior appointment with the DFA when renewing or applying for passports.
Cimafranca said they may use the courtesy lane upon arrival, and make a presentation of their respective IDs.
Cimafranca also reminded the public that the appointment slots are free.
He said fixers should not be entertained. (PR)

TACLOBAN CITY- Gathering and eating of shellfish has been banned in four major water bays in the region due to presence of red tide toxin.
The four bays that have been detected with the red tide toxins are the Matarinao Bay in Eastern Samar; Villareal and Maqueda Bays both in Samar and the Carigara Bay in Leyte.
Dr. Nancy Dayap, head of the laboratory of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR), said that due to the presence of the red tide toxins on these bays, gathering, transporting and eating of shellfish has been banned.
Except for Carigara Bay, red tide toxins were detected in these bays last August 15 based on their meat samples taken from these bodies of water.
Carigara Bay, which covers the towns of Barugo, Capoocan, San Miguel, Babatngon and Carigara, was found of the red tide toxin just last Tuesday(August 22).
Based on the shellfish samples they have gathered, the toxicity levels of these bays ranges from 74.82 to 657.92 saxitoxin microgram/ 100 micrograms of shellfish meat.
“The tolerable limit is just 60 saxitoxin microgram/100 microgram of shellfish meat,” Dayap said.
“We are soliciting support from our local government units located in these bays to help us disseminate the information and that a ban was imposed on these bays,” Dayap said.
According to her, red tide toxins are “inherent” to these bays and were just waiting for favorable weather to “bloom again.”
BFAR asked the public to refrain from eating, gathering or harvesting, transporting and marketing shellfish from the affected bays until the toxicity level has gone down below the said limit.
Red tide is a term used to describe the coastal phenomenon in which the water is discolored by high algal biomass or concentration of algae.
Red tides are harmful as they could cause poisoning and death if not properly treated immediately.
There is no antidote and direct treatment for red tide poisoning as treatment is symptomatic and varies with the severity of symptoms, which include pumping the stomach and inducing vomiting.
(JOEY A. GABIETA)

TACLOBAN CITY-Members of the communist group, the New People’s Army, could still be seen in some remote villages of his town.
And their presence has frightens his people, Burauen Mayor Juanito Renomeron said.
In three occasions, the rebels engaged in firefights with government troops.
The first incident took place last August 15 in Barangay Roxas which resulted for the members of the 78th Infantry Battalion to seized a rebel camp.
The following day, another fire fight occured in between the villages of Roxas and Candag-on and resulted for one soldier to sustain injury. The third encounter happened last August 20 in the boundary of Kagbana and Mahagnao.
These series of firefights resulted for some residents, to include teachers assigned in these areas, to worry on their safety, Renomeron said,
“(But) told them to go back. I advised them to return and to remain calm and continue their work,” the town mayor said.
And should there be an advisory from the military to leave their respective areas, they should immediately heed the advice, Renomeron added.
Renomeron said that although there are rebel members operating in the hinterlands of their town, most of them are not far their area but coming from other municipalities.
During the recently-held Provincial Peace and Order Council Meeting, Leyte Governor Leopoldo Dominico Petilla said that the military informed him on the sightings of the rebel members in Burauen.
“The rebel members comes from other areas and goes to Burauen to operate there,” Petilla said.
Petilla expressed his concern on the safety of the people living in the places identified by the military with rebel presence as some of these barangays are beneficiaries of his More Income in the Countryside Program.
“We have organized farmers in some of these barangays and they are very productive and we are trying to improve their infrastructures as much as we could. Our request is for the military to help these farmers to have normal life,” Petilla said.
(ROEL T. AMAZONA)

TACLOBAN CITY – The Department of Tourism (DOT) regional office here has expressed concern over incomplete reporting of tourist arrivals among local government units in Eastern Visayas, a major setback in reaching the target number visitors last year.
Rodel Balierbare, DOT statistics point person, said the region only recorded a 7.91 percent arrival growth in 2016 when it only welcomed 1.1 million tourists based on official tally.
The target for tourist arrivals for 2016 was 1.2 million.
Citing official statistics, Balierbare said the region’s top five most visited destinations last year are mostly in Baybay City because of their effective data collection and frequent submission of data in terms of same day visitors.
“We have a lot of tourist destinations frequently visited by touristswhich are not included in the list of most visited sites because their statistics are not submitted,” Balierbare said on Tuesday (August 22).
For this year, the DOT has no available arrival data since there are only three local government units that submitted their tourism data.
The government is expecting to welcome at least 1.4 million foreign and domestic visitors in Eastern.
The tourism department is highly dependent on the data submitted by provinces and cities to come up with the regional situation of tourism industry. The data serves as basis for budget allocation and investments from the private sector.
Last week, the DOT held a statistics training for tourism officers to refresh them on generating statistics strategies.
The training guarantees data reliability and allows countries and territories to have a common tool and reference in tourism data generation and to strengthen DOT’s campaign on generating relevant tourism statistics that serves as indicators of industry performance. (SARWELL Q.MENIANO/ALECXIS L.PANGANIBAN, OJT/PNA)

The Department of Education (DepEd) Order No. 13, series of 2017, presents an opportunity for agri-startups in the country to capture the market in public schools and DepEd offices.
Agri-startups, particularly those into food and beverages, now have an opportunity to expand their market and to increase purchases from farmers who supply the raw materials.
DepEd Order No. 13 articulates the department’s policy and guidelines on healthy food and beverages in schools and DepEd offices. The order intends to make available to school children and DepEd personnel healthy food and beverages and provide guidance on categorizing them.
The order also suggests that local governments regulate the sale of food and beverages in school vicinities.
For the longest time, local beverage and food processorshave difficulty penetrating the local market as big companies dominate the market often with millions of pesos allotted for product packaging and promotion.
The limits in the market of startups also limits the volume of their purchases from farmers, who are not motivated to expand production areas or replace crops no longer as prolific as they used to.
Schools represent a big chunk of the potential market of food and beverages for agri-startups.
The DepEd Division of Eastern Samar, for example, has 417 public elementary schools, 27 of them are central schools, and 53 are public secondary schools. The grade school population is placed at 52, 351 and the high school population is 33,000.
If all the 27 central elementary schools and the 53 high schools in Eastern Samar have canteens, which are probably the case, then there would be at least 80 school canteens in the province.
A few of the remaining schools might also have canteensbut let’s start with the 80 and do the math.
If 200 students would enter each of the 80 canteens every school day,that would mean 16,000 students entering the canteenswhich is not improbable given the student population of the province.
If each student spends at least P5 to buy food or beverage from the canteens, that means students in the province spend at least P80,000every school day.
A school year has at least 200 school days. In one year, students in the whole of Eastern Samar could spend as much as P16 million to buy food and beverages from their canteens.
If the amount will go to buy the products of local startups, then more jobs will be created by these startups, and more produce will be purchased from local farmers. This would also mean income for the canteens and more business taxes for local governments.
DepEd can facilitate the entry of these startups into the school canteens. But to gain access, these startups need to enhance their products to comply with the DepEd standards, particularly those articulated in DepEd Order No. 13.
Somebody should provide product development assistance to the startups, which would include analysis of nutrition content, licensing of the products and enhancing their quality and packaging.
DepEd only intended to keep the kids healthy when it issued the orderbut the order can also make local economies vibrant if locally-made food and beverages would make it into school canteens. Should this happen, DepEd will be contributing a lot to the reduction of poverty in Eastern Visayas sooner rather than later.
(DEROPBIE MINDA D. ASEO)

CARIGARA, Leyte- About 132 families whose houses were totally destroyed when supertyphoon “Yolanda” hit this town have transferred to their new houses in one of the resettlement sites here.
The families that were transferred last August 17 were from the barangays of Barugohay Norte, San Mateo, Jugaban, Nauguisan, and Sagkahan.
They were resettled to their new homes in Eco Ville last August 1 and 17, Mayor Eduardo Ong said.
About 3,524 families from different villages of the town are to be relocated to five resettlement sites.
The National Housing Authority has allocated about P1 billion for this housing projects in this town for families who either totally lost their houses due to Yolanda or living in areas declared as not safe by the government.
In Eco Ville 1, about 1, 640 houses are to be constructed while another 680 units in Eco Ville II in Barangay Cabdigahub are undergoing construction.
Also, about 1,524 housing units are to be constructed in Brgy. Parga-um.
It was learned from Mayor Ong that an additional 680 units was recently bided out and the construction of these units started immediately.
According to Ong, the small number of families who now occupies the permanent shelter was due to the fact that NHA has very strict conditions.
“The condition set was to destroy all houses built in flood prone areas. It would be difficult because it is close to their livelihood. Our proposal is for the recipients to stay in their old houses during day time and return to their new homes at night,” Ong said.
(LIZBETH ANN A. ABELLA)