Dubai: The new Philippine Consul-General for Dubai and the northern emirates said he will prioritise the improvement of consular services, ensure better welfare protection, and promote economic empowerment for the community in his first year in office.
Consul-General Paul Raymund Cortes arrived in Dubai from Manila on June 21 to take up the post after former consul-general Franck Cimafranca finished his tour of duty earlier this year.
“For the consular services, we will notch it up a bit and hope to make the consulate premises comfortable for people who come and transact their business here,” Cortes, who has been in foreign service for 19 years, said.
“I understand we don’t have enough space, especially when the volume of people increases [during peak seasons] but I hope that when people come to the consulate for any service, they would leave feeling satisfied, or at least most of them would,” he added.
Cortes said he is currently studying how the services can be made more efficient. He said he is open to suggestions even from the public.
“We currently receive an average of 600 people a day for various services including passport, visa, notarial, report of birth, marriage, and assistance to nationals.”
Cortes said the earlier request for an additional 10 staff has been approved, which now puts the consular staff at 46, including local hires, up from just 27 in 2014. The staff augmentation will bring the staff-to-client ratio to one staff per 8,300 Filipinos.
Cortes said requests for additional personnel for the Assistance-To-Nationals (ATN) section are in the pipeline. Currently, only five personnel are dedicated to doing the section’s tasks including visiting Filipinos in prisons, assisting Filipinos with legal problems to visit police stations, courts, and helping resolve conflicts.
An average of 20 “walk-ins” come to the ATN section for help while scores more are assigned to the section by the main office in Manila.
“We need to hire more people for that section to beef up the services. It’s a huge area for them to cover and the sheer volume of requests [for services] can be overwhelming for them,” Cortes said.
The new consul-general said he plans to request additional Data Capturing Machines needed for passport renewal applications. He also said a financial literacy seminar for couples will also be introduced.
Before assuming his Dubai post, Cortes, 47, was the chief of mission of the consulate-general in Hawaii. The father-of-three was also previously posted in Budapest. Dubai is his first posting in the Middle East, which he admits presents its own challenges.
