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Thursday, March 28, 2024

BI employees set to receive OT pay based on new Palace ruling

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Immigration employees will finally receive their overtime pay anytime this week after Malacañang issued guidelines on the use of income from express lane fund (ELF) to augment their salaries which were vetoed by President Rodrigo Duterte last year.

Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea issued Memorandum Order 24 on July 13, but a copy of which was only released Tuesday.

The suspension of BI workers’ overtime pay has caused longer queues at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport because many employees skipped work as a sign of protest to Duterte’s move to put the bureau’s earnings to the national treasury instead of paying the workers for overtime work.

In his veto message, Duterte allowed the establishment of a trust fund to be sourced from express lane fees, subject to guidelines from the departments of Justice and Budget and Management, and the Commission on Audit.

Duterte vetoed the use of express lane fund (ELF) for the payment of salaries of casual and contractual Immigration personnel, confidential agents and employees, payment of health premiums, and augmentation of salaries of workers who render services beyond office hours.

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However, the memorandum said that there is a need for an interim measure to augment the salaries of BI employees, in recognition of the indispensability of their functions, the apparent disparity between the basic pay of BI employees and employees of government agencies performing comparable functions, and to promote the continuous and unhampered delivery of basic government services.

Under the guidelines, ELF should be used only for the following purposes: 64 percent shall be used to augment the salaries of the BI’s organic personnel who render service beyond regular hours; 25 percent shall be used for the salaries of the BI’s contractual personnel; 11 percent shall be remitted to the National Treasury as income of the General Fund.

“The ELF shall be deposited in a Special Trust Fund Account in a government bank, and shall be made available for use in accordance with the abovementioned Fiscal Year 2018 GAA (General Appropriations Act), and subject to the terms thereof,” the order read.

“Thus, the release of augmentation pay covering the months of January to May 2018 for the entitled organic personnel shall be immediately released,” it added.

The order is effective immediately and will continue to be in force until December 31, 2018 or until the passage by Congress of a measure aimed at updating the BI’s 78-year-old charter and upgrading the pay scale of its workers.

 The release of the augmentation fund would be a great help to more than 2,000 BI employees, who have been receiving salaries below P16,000 a month, according to the BI officials.

Commissioner Jaime Morente welcomed the Palace’s action.

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