PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte threatened to send erring officials of the Bureau of Immigration to Jolo, the stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf terrorists, as Immigration officers went on mass leave to protest unpaid overtime, creating long queues at airport counters.
“I heard something in the Immigration, I told them, if one of them erred, even the supervisor, everyone will be removed,” Duterte said in a speech at Nueva Ecija.
“I won’t spare [anyone]. I’ll throw you to Jolo, including the rotten cops who are in Basilan. I don’t have any patience,” he added.
The President said that he has also received reports that there are Immigration officials who are asking for bribes.
Earlier, the President assigned erring policemen to war-torn Basilan for two years amid a drive to end corruption in the police force.
Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II said 32 Immigration personnel have already resigned while 50 others have filed a leave of absence for six months to look for other jobs as a result of unpaid overtime.
Previously, overtime pay came out of funds collected through the bureau’s express lanes, but the 2017 national budget disallows this practice and allots funds for this purpose instead.
To cope with the shortage of personnel, the Budget department also created 49 positions in the bureau’s finance and administration divisions, along with job positions for 887 new Immigration officers to augment the existing 1,203 personnel.
The bureau, however, has not filled these positions, and wants to continue using express lane collections to fund overtime, a move the Budget department has disallowed.
Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente canceled all the approved leaves of Immigration personnel this month and ordered the deployment of additional 170 immigration officers to the Ninoy Aquino International Airport and other international airports to address the problem of long passenger queues in immigration counters at the airports as the Holy Week holiday break approaches.
Morente said that other Immigration officers assigned in BI field offices in Pampanga, Davao, Aklan and Cebu to likewise report to the airports in Clark, Davao, Kalibo, Mactan to augment the number of BI personnel assigned in those airports.
“With the fielding of these additional Immigration officers, we are confident that these long queues in our counters will be lessened so as not to inconvenience travelers who are going on vacation here and abroad for the Lenten and Easter season,” Morente said.
Morente, however, explained that the deployment to the airports is only temporary and that the affected employees will be recalled to their old units after the Lenten break.
He conceded that the employees’ reassignment will also cause a slight slowdown in operations of the offices that they will temporarily vacate.
“I appeal to our rank and file to remain patient and focused on their responsibilities as everything is being done to address their financial plight that resulted from the loss of their overtime pay,” Morente said.
“We stand together in this quest for what is due and proper. We must continue to act with professionalism and prudence, strong and confident in the belief that justice will prevail,” he added.
Earlier, Morente and Aguirre appealed to President Duterte to reconsider his veto of the use of the BI’s express lane collections to pay overtime to the bureau’s organic personnel and the salaries of its contractual employees.
They proposed that the overtime pay be temporarily reinstated until Congress enacts a new Immigration law that will upgrade the salary scale of BI employees.
After firing Interior Secretary Ismael Sueno and an undersecretary over rice imports, Duterte said two more undersecretaries will be sacked before the end of the week.
“I will not have second thoughts, even if you’re my friend,” Duterte said in Filipino at a speech during the Harvest Festival in Nueva Ecija.
Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel Piñol confirmed that Duterte had sacked Maia Chiara Halmen Reina A. Valdez, an undersecretary with the Office of the Cabinet Secretary for allowing rice imports.
“It’s over the issue of rice importation. She had a conflict with NFA Administrator Jason Aquino,” Piñol said in a text message.
In his speech, Duterte said that he will continue to fire more people if he hears about corruption—even if it is “just a whiff.”
“I was appalled that there was an undersecretary reviewing the decision of Jason Aquino to deny the importation,” Duterte said.
Duterte said he needs to protect Filipino farmers, despite the open market.
“How could I face the poor farmers? Why would we allow importation to compete with the local product?” Duterte said. “Of course we stopped the importation.”
Valdez, a Duterte appointee, oversaw agriculture-related agencies under Cabinet Secretary Leoncio Evasco.
Evasco had earlier said National Food Authority administrator Jason Aquino would face disciplinary sanctions after failing to implement the NFA council’s order to extend rice importation through the minimum access volume scheme.
Extending the MAV importation, Evasco said, aims to save NFA from its debts and “revert it to its former glory as a self-sufficient GOCC [government-owned and -controlled corporation].”
Evasco said Aquino’s failure to implement the order “was compromising the country’s food security, and showing his penchant for creating more debts at the expense of the NFA.”
The NFA administrator earlier proposed importing buffer stocks through government-to-government transactions instead of MAV.