THE Bureau of Immigration (BI) has banned its employees assigned at the international airports from going on leave during the holidays to ensure the availability of adequate personnel to serve the traveling public in anticipation of rise in passenger volume.
BI Commissioner Jaime Morente reiterated a standing policy prohibiting immigration employees deployed at the different ports from applying for vacation leaves starting on Dec. 1 until Jan. 15 next year. Morente said the no-leave policy is necessary to avert long queues at the airports before and after the Christmas and New Year holidays when there is always a marked increase in the number of passengers who enter and exit the country.
“This is the time of every year when the services of our immigration inspectors are most needed in the airports. Thus, in the exigency of the service, we have to make a sacrifice to service the traveling public,” the BI chief said in a statement. He stressed that except for medical and emergency reasons, no application for leave by any BI port personnel will be entertained or approved while the one-and-a-half-month ban is in effect.
Morente added that he ordered Atty. Carlos Capulong, BI port operations chief, to form a team of on-call immigration officers to augment and assist personnel rendering supervisory and primary inspection duties at the airports. Capulong, meanwhile, said he complied with Morente’s directive by designating immigration supervisors and officers assigned as administrative staff at the airport office to comprise the augmentation team.
“While we don’t see the number of passengers rising to pre-pandemic levels, we are getting ready for an increase of Filipinos and balikbayan who may be vacationing here during the holiday season,” said Capulong.
He also bared that recently, 99 newly-hired immigration officers undergoing their on-thejob training were deployed to the three terminals of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA).
