I would like to share an experience during my trip to St. Petersburg, Russia, passing through Helsinki, Finland.
We reached Finland by cruise ship. From there we boarded a train to Russia. On the way, Russian immigration officials took the passports and examined them. However, when they got hold of my passport, one of them spent more time examining it than he did with the others’ passports. It took him about 45 minutes going through my passport.
The man went to the back of the coach with my passport and came back with another big Russian officer. Both of them examined my passport and sized me up. All the while, my friends and I, talking to each other in Tagalog, were wondering what was happening.
An official went to the back of the coach and returned with a machine that looked like a small cash register. They sat across my table and subjected my passport to the X-ray machine right in front of me.
All the time, I was afraid that they might let me off in the middle of Siberia. However, I was confident that there was nothing wrong with my passport. Finally, after about three hours(!), they gave me back the passport and all was fine.
We were wondering what it was they were looking for in my passport that took them that long to examine microscopically.
Back in Manila I saw that my passport was falling apart. The leaves of my passport were disengaging from the glue.
On April 4, 2012, I wrote a letter of complaint to the Department of Foreign Affairs. To make a long story short, the DFA changed my passport, but they wanted to charge me for the replacement. I refused to pay, saying that the defect in my passport was their fault, not mine. At that time, there were three complainants on the waiting bench, exchanging scary experiences, about our defective passports. One of them was bumped off her flight because of an “inferior, defective and self-destructing passport”! Just like mine.
It is not the fault of the airline employee (in the Cebu Pacific incident) who was doing his job like those Russians. The difference is that the Russian immigration inspectors were well-trained. After the Cebu Pacific incident, the DFA came out with an announcement in the press, that sounded as if it’s the fault of passport holders if their passports are defective.
I suggest that the DFA should be investigated for providing inferior, substandard and imperfect passports. It is very possible that during these times of rampant corruption, the DFA may be one government agency which is also corrupt.
Don’t blame the airline, the passport holder or the inspectors. Blame the Department of Foreign Affairs!
—QUINTIN P. SAN DIEGO,
gpsandiego@gmail.com