August 2009

CONSULATE TO UNDERTAKE MISSION TO NEW CALEDONIA

18 August 2009, Sydney – The Philippine Consulate General in Sydney will
undertake a special consular mission to the French overseas territory of New Caledonia
to provide consular services to Filipinos in this South Pacific island 1,200 kilometers east
of the coast of Queensland.

The mission, which will be led by Consul General Eva G. Betita, will travel to the
capital of Nouméa, where there are about a hundred Filipinos working mostly in the hotel
sector, and then to Goro, where more than 850 Filipinos work in the Projet Goro Nickel
mining facility.

The Consulate will register overseas voters for the May 2010 PhilippinePresidential and senatorial elections. “The period for the registration of overseas
absentee voters (OAVs) will end on 31 August, and the Consulate wishes to ensure that
the Filipinos in New Caledonia will be able to exercise their right to vote,” Consul
General Betita said.

Records show that 315 Filipinos in New Caledonia were registered as OAVs
during the 2006 registration period. This was during the peak of the employment of
Filipino workers for the construction of the Goro Nickel mining project, when their
numbers totaled more than 3,000.

The mission, which the Consulate will undertake from 21 to 23 August 2009, will
reach out to the New Caledonia-based Filipinos who did not register in the previous OAV
registration periods.

The Consulate will also provide passport and notarial services. “Because there is
no Philippine Foreign Service Post in New Caledonia, expatriate Filipinos in this territory
have extra difficulty renewing their passport, especially with the biometric data capture
procedure of the Machine Readable Passport,” she said. Some Filipinos even have to
return to the Philippines just to renew their passport, other sources said.

This mission is also an opportunity for the Consulate to get firsthand data on the
current conditions of New Caledonia and the situation of Filipinos in this French territory.

The affairs of Filipinos in New Caledonia, the third largest island in the Pacific
Ocean after Papua New Guinea and New Zealand, are under the consular jurisdiction of
the Philippine Consulate General in Sydney.