good evening po mga bossing...baguhan ako dito sa tsikot.com..

the Philippine machine readable passport will be made available starting sept 17. until now, only senior citizens, ofws and philippine diplomats have this passport.

the mrp program of the dfa is in line with an ICAO (international civil aviation organization) memo that states that all member countries of the ICAO should have machine readable passports by april 1, 2010. this means that even if you renewed your passport na, kunwari expiration eh 2012, kailangan pa rin natin magrenew to mrp by april 2010 o hindi na tayo makakapag abroad. hindi ata masaya yun. hehe.

pero...kahit mrp na tayo, palpak pa din. we can't fully comply with the ICAO standard kz dapat, digitally printed na yung photo sa passport, sten, gnun padin picture pdin though light blue background na (ICAO memo ulet dapat light blue background compared to the present which is white). but nevertheless, this philippine mrp is way overdue. if i'm not mistaken, only 11 countries in the world still use handwritten passports (sa asean countires, tayo nalang handwritten...daig pa tayo ng myanmar). napakadaling talagang i fake ng passport natin, kaya lagi tayo napagiinitan sa immigration sa ibang bansa.

the e passport program though is a different story. the implementation of this project is stalled by legal concerns (what else?) may TRO versus sa dfa kaya hindi muna maiimplement yung e passport. for now, the maroon mrp will do. (eto na yung meh microchip)

kailangan din po pala ng personal apperance gawa yung signature eh digitized.

according to the dfa, the mrp passport will still cost the same...P500 for normal and P750 for expedited processing


hope this helps