Philippines moves to defend its passport quality

MANILA, April 22 (Xinhua) -- The Philippine government on Tuesday defended the quality of the new computerized passports, disputing reports which say the passports are prone to tampering and fall below the standards and requirements of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).

The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said in a statement that the machine readable passports incorporate security features specifically designed to discourage tampering and improve the integrity of the passport system.

Otherwise, it noted that tampered or forged passports will be rejected at airports, ports of entries of foreign countries.

Among the Philippine passport's security features include watermarked paper and colored fibers, ultraviolet (UV) - reactive inks, a combination of security prints and laser-perforated alpha-numeric serial numbers.

The DFA said a new system is developed to include the maintenance of a secure passport database to aid in rooting out identity theft and raising the integrity of the country's passport system.

"Since the launch of the new machine-readable passports in June last year, the department has not had any verified case of fraud," the DFA said.

The DFA has received 6,000 passport applications daily since the middle of last year.