"Will the concerned officials of this administration turn a blind eye to this?"
"Will the concerned officials of this administration turn a blind eye to this?"
IT IS well that Foreign Affairs Secretary Teddy Boy Locsin has clarified that the passport database is in place after all. “Not run away but lost just the same, unusable in some parts and largely inaccessible,” tweeted the good secretary after creating quite a stormafter stating in an earlier tweet that the former passport technology provider, French company Oberthur, had run away with the passport data base containing personal and related details of millions of passportholders. It turns out the DFA has the files after all, including a back up data base which could be activated anytime there is a real need for it.
With that assurance, Secretary Locsin can now proceed to complete whathis predecessors, Secretaries Yasay and Cayetano, had been grappling with since the Duterte administration took office, namely, what’s the real deal with the agency’s passport provider, APOI/UGEC, that is keeping the DFA from running a smooth, reliable and secure passport issuance system.
This issue has become very critical in view of the continuing problems besetting the passport issuance system from cost to data privacy to delays and waiting time to connectivity with our regional offices and overseas posts and the like. If we go by the latest reports and the assurances of DFA officials and the provider, the efficiency and effectiveness of the system is something which can be remedied in no time at all.
That, of course, will be tested in the days ahead as more and more passport applicants get to enter the system. But then again we have been hearing these kinds of assurances before when the provider first got hold of the contract under questionable circumstances.
Only to find out that any improvements involves additional costs, which is precisely the reason why the agreement with APOI/UGEC needs tyo be reviewed with a fine tooth comb if we are to truly be assured that the passport system will finally be running in the manner the public expected it to be. After all, we are talking here of about 70-million issued passports of various durations which means at least two-million passport renewals every year and possibly another 500,000 new issuances annually.
If passports now cost more than a thousand, that’s billions of pesos in revenues if not profits to the lucky provider.Indeed, a full audit of the contract and the system should be undertaken despite the ongoing resistance of APOI/UGEC and some powerful sectors, including DFA insiders who should know better but who have joined the chorus using that worn out argument that it such an effort can result in further delays and backlogs in the issuance of needed passports as if these guys have not heard of successful multi tasking before.
Besides there have been a number of such audits before from the investigations conducted at the time the contract was awarded to APOI/UGEC to the subsequent ones involving delays, to the COA audits and that one conducted by then DFA Secretary Perfecto Yasay Jr. In a word, there are lots of records around which can give Secetary Locsin and his crew a pretty good picture of what’s this deal is all about and why the provider has not performed in accord with its commitments.
In fact, Secretary Locsin will be doing the public a lot of good if he gets to find out why APOI/UGEC has become the “trusted” printer of a number of government’s high security printing requirements such as the BIR excise tax stamps and, as reports go, part of the ballots and election paraphernalia used in the 2016 elections.
Speaking of the documentary stamps, early on when the Duterte administration took over, Malacañang ordered a probe into the reported overprinting of stamps for liquor and cigarettes as provided in the expanded excise tax bill on such products.
This probe came in the wake of the seemingly lethargic revenue collection from these products which stumped the new officials considering that these were supposed to have spiked with the expended bill. And, voila, the “trusted” printer of the BIR stamps as mwas APOI—the same printer of the passports—as both contracts were awarded towards the last year of the Aquino administration.
Just like the passport contract, the BIR tax stamp contract was also shrouded in secrecy and undertaken under mysterious circumstances after APO was given the status of a preferred government printer. In other words, “trusted.”
By whom remains in the realm of shadowy advisories by people who were, one way or the other, involved in the process by which these contracts came about. But one thing is certain. This “trusted” printer is involved in the printing of billions of pesos worth of income for those who managed to have these contracts “perfected” before the Duterte administration got into office. The question is: will the concerned officials of this administration turn a blind eye to the reported public monies which have been diverted to private pockets as contracted? Well, in the case of the BIR tax stamps, government managed to get one cigarette manufacturer, Mighty Cigarette Co., to pay up at least P36 billion for its reported tax deficiency. What about APO and its passport provider/partner? Should we allow them to simply take a pass? Huwag naman.
