14 October 2013 - Philippine Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Ezzedin Tago led a team from the Philippine Embassy in Riyadh which met with the leaders of the Filipino community organizations in the Eastern Region on October 11.

During the meeting, Ambassador Tago and the community organizations reviewed various concerns important to the community, including consular outreach missions, the amnesty period, and services to Filipinos in the area.

The Ambassador thanked the community organizations for their wholehearted support to the Embassy consular outreach program.  He noted that by end of 2013, the Embassy would have completed 21 consular outreach missions to Al-Khobar alone including other outreach missions to neighboring cities in the Eastern Region, which is the highest number of outreach missions conducted to Al-Khobar in any single year.

Ambassador Tago informed the community that the Embassy plans to conduct one more outreach mission spanning the period of two weeks at a designated venue.  He added that the dates for the special outreach limited to passport services would be announced in the near future.

The Embassy and the community also reviewed recent developments with the amnesty granted by King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques.   The Embassy issued travel documents and renewed expired passports and issued replacement passports for thousands of Filipinos, after the Department of Foreign Affairs waived various regular requirements that facilitated the issuance of the documents and shortened the issuance period for passports.

Ambassador Tago urged all organizations to urge their members and friends who have not corrected their status to do so in the next few days before the deadline ends on November 03. He noted the repeated advice of the Saudi Interior and Labor Ministries for all illegal expatriates to take advantage of the amnesty and correct their status immediately.

He also reminded the community organizations to be aware of and respect the Kingdom’s rules and regulations to avoid any inconvenience or difficulty in the future.  He stressed that any Filipino should not take matters into their own hards and they should, instead, immediately refer cases of Filipinos requiring assistance to the officials of the Embassy and Philippine Overseas Labor Office (POLO) for them to closely coordinate with the host government on these matters.

The Ambassador also reiterated the Embassy’s seriousness in its fight against fixers who forge or fake documents of various kinds, and recalled that the Embassy had issued several advisories against fixers and those who misrepresent themselves as officials of the Embassy or POLO. END