(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) The Filipino ambassador has vowed to check the veracity of the claims of an advocate group for overseas Filipinos that an essential travel document has been fraudulently sold for hefty prices, while she has put in place mechanisms to check the documents' authenticity.
However, she has denied claims that embassy staff have been accepting bribes for blank documents.
Ambassador Grace Relucio Princesa told Khaleej Times that she would cooperate with the Migrante International UAE in looking into the matter and to check the authenticity of several Affidavit of Support (AoS) documents required by the Philippine Bureau of Immigration Department (BID) to bring their families to their host countries. She said controls were in place at the embassy and a team would be formed in coordination with the Filipino embassy in Tehran, which has consular jurisdiction over the Kish Island, to look into the Migrante reports that thousands of Filipinos are in Kish Island on a visa run.
Ambassador Princesa said the embassy has a list of those who had been issued affidavits at the Philippine Embassy in Abu Dhabi, and those AoS presented by Migrante could be checked against this list.
The ambassador urged all Filipinos obtaining AoS from travel agencies at a hefty price to come forward and execute sworn statements.
Nhel Morona, UAE Country Coordinator of Migrante Middle East, said the organisation had evidence that staff from the embassy were taking cash in return for blank affidavits - an allegation denied by the ambassador.
He said ambassador Princesa dismissed the claims and said that those AoS were fake.
"Morona said that Migrante would continue to find proof of the AoS sale to back its campaign to completely scrap the AoS requirement, which Migrante believes is not serving its intended purpose.
Migrante would submit a report to its congressmen for a congressional hearing in Manila on the scrapping of AoS, he said. "AoS has been there for a long time. It did not serve its purpose."
He said that Ambassador Princesa told Migrante that the diplomatic mission will make a report to Manila and study the AoS cases. "An Aos is sold at Dh300; Dh100 of this is received as payment to the embassy and, according to our source, Dh150 goes to the fixer and the Dh50 to the middle man."
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