Brazilians with Italian citizenship have faced difficulties obtaining their passport at some consulates in the country that have adopted the WhatsApp video call scheduling system, a situation that has worsened after the Covid-19 pandemic, with demand dammed up.
Reports speak of hundreds of calls made a day, without being answered – or he is constantly busy or calls until he drops. Owner of a pet shop in Curitiba, Michelle Ghilardi, 28, needed to renew her passport, which she expired last year. The capital of Paraná started to adopt the system in February this year and tried to schedule the issuance of the document for months without success.
“I called from 9 am sharp until noon, there were days when I reached more than 200 calls, for months”, reports the businesswoman. “They also don’t answer emails, I’ve also sent several messages on social media and I’ve never been answered.”
Before the WhatsApp system, Curitiba adopted Prenot@mi, in which the request was made through the website, but there were also reports of difficulties that prevented the finalization of the appointment.
Jean Pellanda, 30, from Curitiba, reports that the site never worked. “When they said it would change, I thought it would improve the system. In the end, it’s a number to serve thousands of people.”
Service in the capital of Paraná occurs from Monday to Thursday, from 9 am to 12 pm, according to the consulate website, and the time is another reason for dissatisfaction for Pellanda, who reports having already called about 300 times in one day. 🇧🇷[É] as if no one needed to work, so it became practically impossible. I tried in the first three weeks and gave up, because you call 300 times a day and you don’t get an answer. I waited two months and tried again. I did not make it.”
THE Sheetin a note, the consul general of Curitiba, Salvatore Di Venezia, justified the option for scheduling as a system that “provides better defenses against cyberattacks by specialized agencies, which in the past were able to occupy all available vacancies and sell the appointments to third parties”.
The issue of third-party interference was also mentioned by the representation of São Paulo, a pioneer in this form of service, adopted in November 2018, and also the target of complaints, even before the pandemic.
The consulate in São Paulo stated that “the service helps in a decisive way to exclude any external interference by unauthorized or illegal intermediaries (dispatchers, cybercrimes) that aim to distort the progress of the scheduling process, making the service less fluid and transparent”.
Based on the same arguments, since the capital of São Paulo adopted the system, other consulates have followed the same line, such as those in Belo Horizonte and Rio de Janeiro, in addition to Curitiba. In other Brazilian capitals, representations have also been the target of complaints on their profiles on social networks.
A resident of Pinheiros (ES), student Beatriz Degani, 23, also called hundreds of times the number of the consulate in the capital of Rio de Janeiro, which is responsible for serving people in Espírito Santo. “In the third or fourth week that I was calling, I watched a video in which they hinted that they only answered on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays”, reports the young woman. The representation website states that the service takes place on all working days.
“So, on Friday, I called 40, 50 times and they answered. They were very helpful and I managed to make an appointment.” Amidst the complaints, there are also praises on social media. A user said on the São Paulo consulate page that she had received very good service after calling for three consecutive days.
Both the Rio and Belo Horizonte offices spoke to Sheet, by email, about the performance of dispatchers for the reservation of vacancies in the old system. The amount charged could reach R$ 1,000, according to the consulate of the Rio de Janeiro capital.
The four diplomatic representations also cited their efforts to meet the high demand. In Curitiba, Di Venezia stated that the verification carried out during the call speeds up service at the counter, which allows “increasing the number of passports issued each day”.
In addition, he stressed that “the demand is much greater than the operational possibility of the consulate general, which manages 130,000 Italians with recognized citizenship”.
In the capital of Minas Gerais, the representation said it had doubled the number of employees in the passport sector to serve the 42,000 Italians who are under its responsibility – in 2020, there were 36,000. The Rio agency, in turn, explained that it operates with the capacity to answer up to 50 video calls per day and recognizes that the number of calls is higher.
São Paulo, which at the beginning operated from 8:30 am to 1:30 pm, from Monday to Friday, and today operates from 8:00 am to 6:00 pm, stated that operators are instructed to schedule the maximum number allowed per day and, even in case of missed calls, they must return the call.
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