How Filipinos can Authenticate Documents at DFA (Red Ribbon)
Documents red ribboned by the Department of Foreign Affairs or DFA are one of the many requirements that Filipinos need to do when they want to live or work abroad. Mostly, OFWs bound to Middle East countries like Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates or UAE, Yemen etc. requires OFWs documents to be authenticated by the DFA.
Having documents red ribboned can be both expensive and exhausting, depending on the number and types of documents that your foreign employer requires. This is because DFA requires academic records, training skills certificates, birth, marriage and certification of singleness be certified by the corresponding offices that should provide them before submitting for red ribbon. Likewise, affidavits for discrepancy in documents that supports documents for your travel requirements needs to be red ribboned too. You can check the list of documents that needs to be red ribboned here.
If all the documents are ready, you can now submit it to DFA for authentication. Just follow these steps:
1. Fill out an application form. Maximum of 5 documents per application form is allowed. So you have to double check how many documents you have to know how many application forms you need to fill out.
2. Present your valid ID upon submission of the documents to the Processing Window.
3. Go to cashier and pay the authentication fee. The authentication fee is P100 per document for regular processing which takes 5 business days. If you are in a rush, you can pay P200/ document for your documents to be processed in just 2 business days.
4. Keep the machine validated receipt given by the cashier. Take note of the date indicated for the release of your documents.
5. Claim the authenticated documents on the release date by showing the machine validated receipt given to you by the cashier at the releasing window.