Wednesday, February 20, 2008

It's Jeferson -- With A Single 'F'

Last Friday 02-15-2008, I went to the DFA to do my personal appearance for my passport application. They said it was needed especially because I'm applying for the new machine readable passport that the DFA was issuing. My employer commissioned a travel agency to process my passport, that way it will faster and less trouble some for me (Means I will not skip work just to apply for my passport).

I was to meet the travel agency's liaison officer so that he can assist me for the personal appearance. I was there around 8:30 am, a large crowd was already there, all applying for a passport. In fairness, the liaison officer was very accommodating and I was inside this room where you have to check the details of your application, by 9:30.

However upon checking the encoded information in my application, I saw that my name was spelled incorrectly. Wasn't surprised by this in any account, my name is usually spelled incorrectly especially if you're not going to check it against the form because it is commonly spelled with a double 'F'. So I went up to the DFA personnel an ask them to correct the info, they took my form and told me to wait.

An hour and a half later, my form is not yet returned from the correction. How can it take so long if the correction will only involve deleting a single character from my name. I confronted the DFA personnel and ask how could it take that long, around 50 people that was behind me in the line already passed me and yet no correction?

To cut the story short, my application took that long to correct was because it was encoded again from the start and was placed at the end of the queue. I don't know what was the purpose of doing this, but correcting a single character that was already encoded should not take that long. All my day wasted just because an encoder cannot key-in an information that has at least 3 correct versions (I provided 3 valid IDs, a birth certificate, a marriage contract and the application form all of which shows the correct spelling of my name... Jeferson with a single 'f') in the application.