(Eagle News) — The Department of Budget and Management has approved the addition of more than 800 immigration posts to address the apparent shortage of people at the Bureau of Immigration, which has led to long queues at immigration desks in airports, including the Ninoy Aquino International Airport.
Presidential Spokesperson Ernesto Abella said on Monday that the 887 “immigration officers and assistant positions” approved on March 28 were in addition to the existing 1203.
It was unclear if these 1203 were all assigned at NAIA.
He said prior to that, the DBM approved 49 positions for the BI’s “financial and management division, and administrative division.”
“In other words, (the DBM) acted. To add positions, OK? Because they were supposed to be seriously undermanned, which was apparently the reason why there was so much overtime charges,” he said.
He said based on the statement, the creation of new positions “will increase the immigration officer and immigration assistant positions by 74 percent, and will require an estimated personnel service cost of P381 million on top of the amount of overtime pay included in the miscellaneous personnel, and personal benefits.”
“In other words, the whole argument of the DBM is that they did act…The onus, the burden of response is now upon the BI officials. They have not accepted it. They choose to stick to their guns about overtime pay,” he said.
“But if they responded, then the queue would really lessen if there were more officials, if there were more officers there in the immigration..In other words, the executive branch is saying, we’ve already offered you, please act on it. However, up to this point they have not,” he added.
Resignations in the BI started after President Rodrigo Duterte stopped the BI from using the funds collected from airport express lanes as overtime pay.
Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre said the DBM had allotted P200 million instead for this.
This would, however, he said, allow a maximum of P5,000 in overtime pay for each immigration officer, much less than the maximum of P48,000 a month in overtime pay each would get every month under the old system.