PRESS RELASE
PR-005-2018

STATEMENT ON THE JANUARY 4, 2018 INCIDENT
AT THE PHILIPPINE EMBASSY IN RIYADH

(Riyadh, 9 January 2018) – The Philippine Embassy in Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia takes strong exception to a Facebook post that portrayed the Embassy personnel of the Philippine Embassy in Riyadh, particularly those assigned to Passport Encoding, have been remiss in their duties as government employees.

The Embassy strongly denies these baseless allegations as its personnel have always been committed to serve its clients with professionalism, dedication and hard work.  This can readily be proven by its consistent “Excellent” rating given by its clients in the daily, monthly and yearly Client Feedback reports.

It may be recalled that on 14 December 2017, President Rodrigo Duterte declared under Memorandum Circular 37, dated 13 December 2017, the suspension of government work for 26 December 2017 and 2 January 2018.  In compliance with the President’s instruction, the Embassy had to cancel work on the said dates.

Because of the cancellation, the passport clients of the Embassy who have previously secured passport appointments on 2 January 2018 were notified that they shall be accommodated on 3 and 4 January 2018, hence, a slight increase in the number of clients on said dates.

Aside from these dates being the first working days of 2018, the Embassy has likewise launched the updated e-Passport System which provides for the new Philippine Passport with a 10-year validity period.  The encoding of information took a bit more time than usual in view of the updated system.

Notably, on 4 January 2018, a good number of consular personnel left for Al Jouf to conduct a scheduled Embassy on Wheels (EOW).  This activity benefited as sizable number of our OFWs in Northern Region.  Despite their diminished number, our Embassy personnel continued to perform their functions to serve the public and finished their tasks despite the challenges that day which were temporary in nature.  The incident is an isolated one and does not reflect the overall performance of the Embassy.

It is worth to note that the Facebook post did not show nor mention that ALL passport applications on 4 January 2018 were acted on and processed that day.  Additional encoders were deployed to expedite the process as soon as the delay in the encoding became apparent.  The Embassy personnel dutifully finished all passport transactions on the said date.

In the interest of truth and fairness, the Philippine Embassy in Riyadh respectfully asks our kababayans to refrain from jumping into conclusions that only serve to muddle the factual setting of the incident.  The Embassy reassures our community of its commitment to serve our people with utmost dedication.

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