First EOW in Buraydah, Qassim Region
PRESS RELEASE No. APV-77-2008
08 October 2008
In response to the clamor of the Filipino community in Qassim Region and in line with the service-oriented mission of the Embassy, Ambassador Antonio P. Villamor will lead the “Embassy on Wheels” in Buraydah on October 16-17.
In what is probably the first in a very long time, the EOW will bring to the Filipinos in Buraydah and surrounding areas various consular and labor services, especially the processing and encoding of passport applications, which under the new Machine Readable Passport (MRP) system requires personal appearance of applicants.
The venue of the EOW services will be at Al Salam Hotel in downtown Buraydah.
To provide full services during this EOW, the Consular Section of the Embassy will be closed on Thursday, October 16.
At the same time, the Filipino public is advised once again to check their important documents and ensure their passports are always valid for at least six months.
This is extremely important to avoid cases where they need to renew their passports immediately to travel to other countries, renew their Iqamah or transact with local banks, but may face a considerable delay due to the longer turnaround time between the processing and releasing of the MRPs.
The Embassy since May 31 has been fully implementing the MRP project under the directives of the Department of Foreign Affairs, which has stopped sending the old, green passport booklets. END
