Philippine Embassy Consular Section in Riyadh - a salute!

Amidst the negative publicity that government employees are known to project, there are some incidents that give a breeze of fresh air to dispel this notion.

Today an incident like that happened to me.

The past few days saw me travelling back and forth to the Philippine Embassy in Riyadh because I needed to renew my passport. Unlike before when one can just wait for an hour or two before getting the much coveted document, I was informed this time that they had run out of booklets to use for the new passports.

"Just leave your old passport here so we can process it then call us after a day or two." I was told.

That was 2 days ago. When I called earlier today, I was happy to hear that my passport was finished and just waiting to be picked up. So after work, I went directly to the compound with the hopes of getting home immediately after getting the document.

But this didn't go smoothly as I initially expected.

I came at around 3:30pm, which is half an hour before closing time. All the other people that came after me already got their respective passports and left. The embassy staff looking for my passport can't seem to find it. 4:00pm came, the end of official working hours, but still no sign of my passport. After that, another staff came to help but still nothing. I even volunteered to go inside to help but apparently that's not allowed.

I was getting anxious. Half an hour has passed 4pm and still they can't find it. There are four people now looking for it in all the shelves and tables over and over.

Then a thought suddenly struck me.

There I was, looking inside from outside the counter, and seeing these people frantically looking for my passport as if there was no tomorrow. Is this for real? These are the people that are supposedly too self-absorbed and don't care about about the public they are serving. Yet they’re doing everything they can for this non-VIP person who’s the only hindrance for them to get out of the office. I was thinking that these guys could easily just dismissed me and tell me to come back tomorrow, but they didn’t! I know it’s their job but for me who had experienced one time too many the kind of demeaning and condescending treatment from other government agencies, this came as a complete surprise.

So after almost an hour after their regular working hours, one of them finally saw my passport. I was so relieved and noticed that they looked as relieved as I was. One of them apologized for the inconvenience I went through. After the smoke cleared, I felt very happy not just because I finally saw my passport, but also because of the unselfish effort that I saw unexpectedly from these people.

So to the staff of the Consular Section in the Philippine Embassy in Riyadh, I’d like to thank you again for your effort and may you continue to give the public the same selflessness that our country sorely needs at these times.