Following the opening of a similar service by the Bureau of Entry and Exit, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has opened a service hotline in its consular affairs department to supply the public with information related to passport and visa matters. The hotline number is (02) 389-7711.
Ki-tseng Lin, director of the consular affairs department, indicates that statistics have shown that 80 percent of telephone calls from the public to the ministry are inquiries or complaints about the handling of passports, documentation, or related matters. If the calls are not transferred smoothly to the proper office, they interfere with the normal operations of other offices, causing the overall workload to increase accordingly.
The new service hotline has ten telephone lines and is manned by four persons from the consular affairs department, the staff of which is rotated at the duty in turns.
With the arrival of the peak travel season from the Chinese Lunar New Year holidays through summer vacation, the number of passports being processed has climbed to 7,000 or 8,000 a day. To save time, the public is encouraged to make use of the line in inquiring about passport and visa application procedures rather than traveling to the ministry in person.