Palace blames Immigration bureau for longer queues at NAIA terminals

Malacañang on Tuesday blamed the Bureau of Immigration (BI) for the longer queues at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) as BI employees insist on their previous overtime pay.

Presidential spokesperson Ernesto Abella echoed the position of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) on the matter after some immigration officers refused to go to work because of their concerns on their overtime pay.

“The whole argument of the DBM is that they did act and they did add. Now, the bonus, the burden of response is now upon the BOI officials, they have not accepted it. They have... They choose to stick to their guns about overtime pay,” he said in a briefing in Malacañang.

“But if they responded, then the queues would really lessen if there were more officials, if there were more officers there in the Immigration. That is the position of the DBM. Mas maraming personnel, mas maraming maseserbisyuhan,” he added.

“So in other words... I mean the Executive branch is saying, we’ve already offered you, please act on it. However, up to this point, they have not,” Abella continued.

DBM Secretary Benjamin Diokno said the overtime pay the immigration officers were asking were against the law. He argued that the law said that overtime pay for government employees should not exceed 50 percent of their regular pay. 

But the overtime pay that immigration officers usually get is five times higher than their regular pay.

In the DBM statement quoted by Abella, it was revealed that the DBM ad the Department of Justice as well as the BI agreed to create additional positions on January 5, 2017.

It said that the BI employees’ concerns on overtime pay were a result of the veto by the President on express lane charges under 2017 General Appropriations Act.

“So on the 30th, the DBM initially approved 49 positions for its Financial and Management Division and Administrative Division. On March 28, after a series of consultations, the DBM, true to its commitment, approved 887 additional Immigration officers and assistant positions to augment its existing 1,203,” Abella read.  

“But 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 381 million on top of the amount of overtime pay included in the miscellaneous personnel benefits,” he added, still quoted the DBM. — MDM, GMA News