Living in Cebu

In early 2006 I will be moving to Cebu, Philippines with the entire family.

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Paid traffic violatin - Gettng my License converted

Finally finished paying traffic violation

The day before yesterday I left my brother-in-law to go up to City Hall and pay my traffic violation. After that he was to go back to the Police station and get the violation cleared. He paid the violation but when he went back to the Police station he was informed that they only do accept the receipts in the morning. So he had to go back again yesterday.

In the West that payment and removal of the violation would be linked by computer and you would have options to pay without even leaving home. Instead my brother-in-law spent all together half a day paying a 200 peso violation.

If it were my time it would be better to slip the traffic officer 500 pesos and avoid all this. I am not advocating this but you can understand why people would do this. Inefficiency and slow manual systems encourage corruption.

Getting Your License Converted

The process of getting a Philippine license on the basis of your existing foreign one is called conversion.

When I got my Philippine license I was referred to a lady who worked in area but was not a fixer. She took me step-by-step through getting my license. I had everything in order so there was no real problem.

First I had my drug test. The drug test simply requires you to urinate into a container, which is somehow checked for illegal substances. No idea what. When you urinate you go into what looks on the outside to be a normal CR but to your surprise there is a large window from which staff working away in the office can view you.

Despite this there would be many ways to cheat the system. You could easily bring in a small container with someone else’s urine if you were a drub addict.

The drug test cost was 150 pesos and there were many places you could have the test. In other words it is being run by private enterprise and NOT administered directly by the authorities. If the authorities ran it I imagine there would be a long wait for the test, as there seems to be with every government run enterprise.

On the down side there does not seem to be any real monitoring and would be open to corruption as I suspect (been told) that it would also be easy to simply “pay” for a clear report.

Given the above the entire drug test process right now would be ineffective at detecting drug users applying for a license. No doubt any government report would say that none were detected so they authorities might pat themselves on the back for implementing such an effective process. Sorry I am being too cynical.

Once I completed the drug test the next is the medical. The doctor took my blood pressure, which was normal. He then asked me a few questions including if I wore glasses. I told him I had some for reading, which I did not need, but relieved eyestrain. He did not bother with any more tests. I paid the 50 pesos with my medical clearance.

Next stop was the actual license authority. Will post that experience next time.

Posted: Tuesday 11th July 2006, 9:00 PM

Learn To Speck Cebuano

If you are planning no living in Cebu then its a good idea to learn the language and I have found a great teacher here in Cebu. He can also assist you online and is available to translate any documents.

If you plan to live in Cebu then why not learn to speak the language and earn to Speak Cebuano - Translation service also available