IMMIGRATION Commissioner Jaime Morente ordered all immigration officers at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport not to go on leave starting Oct. 28, 2017 until Jan. 15, 2018.
This would ensure enough manpower to serve the traveling public for critical events, like All Saints and all Souls day, the Asean Leaders’ Summit and related meetings and the Christmas Season.
Morente said the directive aimed to ensure the uninterrupted delivery of service by the bureau to passengers who would be traveling, entering and exiting the country during the said holidays.
“What we are trying to avoid here are those exhausting long queues that could inconvenience passengers while awaiting the conduct of immigration boarding formalities in our counters at the airports,” Morente said.
The BI chief, however, stressed that long queues at Naia’s immigration counters should be expected starting November due to the anticipated increase in passenger volume that always occur before and during the Asean Summit and especially Yuletide.
“But these long queues will move faster and won’t inconvenience passengers if the immigration officers manning our booths at the airports are in full attendance,” he said.
Meanwhile, BI port operations division chief Marc Red Mariñas said the peak travel season appeared to have started at the NAIA as there had been a noticeable increase in passenger arrivals and departures in the past several days.
“We have already warned our personnel who are always absent that they could be administratively charged for habitual absenteeism if they don’t mend their ways,” he said.
He pointed out that under civil services, habitual absenteeism was a grave offense punishable with six-month suspension or dismissal from the service.
Mariñas also disclosed he had instructed members of the BI’s border control and intelligence unit at the Naia and other airports to be on heightened alert as international terrorists and other undesirable aliens might take advantage of the Asean Summit meetings and the holidays to sneak into the country.
He said the BCIU operatives were also directed to be vigilant in detecting and stopping attempts by human traffickers to spirit their victims out of the country.