Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. on Tuesday said he would “kill” anyone who would ask for birth certificate as a requirement for renewal of passport.
The country’s top diplomat made the statement after a Twitter user asked if the document was still needed for renewing passport.
“Sir @teddyboylocsin kailangan pa rin po ba ng birth certificate pag nag parenew ng passport? Salamat po,” the Twitter user asked Locsin.
And the DFA chief replied: “Hindi. P***a. Not for passport renewal. If anyone asks you, tell me who and I will fucking kill him/her.”
“I just want to make myself fucking clear. That fucking birth certificate requirement is out because it was an idiotic requirement according to top retired DFA officials,” Locsin said.
Earlier, Locsin issued Department Order 03-2019 last month removing birth certificate as a requirement for passport renewal.
But the said order only covers regular renewal of passports and not for the following cases: first time passport applications; renewal applications for lost and mutilated passports; renewal requiring changes in the passport entries; renewal of old brown and green passports bearing no complete middle name; and applicants included in DFA’s watchlist.
The move came in the same month that the DFA chief claimed that the department is requiring passport holders to submit their birth certificates in renewing their passports because the private passport maker took all the data when its contract was terminated.
This led the DFA to “rebuild” its database for passports issued before 2010.
Later, Locsin admitted that there was no runaway of passport information affected by the data breach in the department.
He said the data was made inaccessible and that access was declared denied since the contractor’s term ended.
He made the turnaround from his previous position after former DFA chief Perfecto Yasay Jr. said that Locsin might have been misinformed about the supposed passport data loss, and that it was malicious to say that the private contractor made off with the data.
