I have just read the new guidelines [on outbound travel] released by airport and seaport authorities in the Philippines. It is composed of 7 pages and too lengthy to be published in this paper. Having perused it, I have the following observations:<\/p>\n
1. It does not contain a straight-forward instruction;
\n2. It is open for interpretation depending on who is
\n reading it;
\n3. The guideline is open-ended and will only lead to
\n confusion and delay for legitimate travellers;
\n4. There is no consideration taken by the authorities for
\n the airline-fee paying passenger;
\n5. The government did not exhibit its intention to
\n facilitate the processing of outbound passengers in a
\n smooth and orderly manner;
\n6. These guidelines can be taken as another business
\n opportunity for “fixers” and an invitation to produce
\n corrupt employees and officials;
\n7. Various documents and forms were required by the
\n authority without the benefit of establishing the
\n source of the documents and providing an official
\n template as sample and guide;
\n8. No detailed contact information of the government
\n branch was provided should there be questions and
\n clarifications;
\n9. A one-stop-shop or an online customer service
\n advisor was not provided; and
\n10. The absence of a step-by-step procedure is not in
\n the guidelines;
\n11. The electronic copy of the guideline is such in poor
\n state that I can relate it to the documents made in
\n the 60’s and early 70’s. Can they not issue a decent
\n copy in Adobe format?<\/p>\n
Overall, the guideline is another backward step for our officials who are supposedly experts, trained and\/or educated internationally at taxpayers’ expense. They are mandated to create and fashion a user-friendly structure and methodology to facilitate operations and processes. We cannot deny that there are those who exploit the system, but it should not be at the expense of legitimate outbound travellers who are effectively delayed, if not hindered, in their travel. These workers are considered bread and butter of the Philippine economy. We owe a lot to them and they deserve proper recognition and respect. In this age of robotic technology, we deliberately remain pre-historic in our people management.<\/p>\n
Such is life in the Philippines! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have just read the new guidelines [on outbound travel] released by airport and seaport authorities in the Philippines. It is composed of 7 pages and too lengthy to be published in this paper. Having perused it, I have the following observations:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,52],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1885"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1885\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}