Economic saboteurs
LET us call a spade a damn shovel and tell President Duterte the sad but embarrassing truth: Some of his airport immigration employees are economic saboteurs.
These people are putting the country in a bad light. They have not a streak of patriotism left in them.
Just when the economy is booming, tourists are flooding in, and the rest of Asia are speeding toward a bright future, the Philippines seems moving backward. On a whim, many immigration employees at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) went on leave. In the last few weeks, there have been long lines of departing travelers waiting at the immigration booths but many of the windows are empty.
Persons with disability (PWDs) and senior citizens are forced to line up along with the others. Probably there would be some passengers who would miss their flight.
As in 2017, the immigration employees – our public servants – are taking their revenge on airline passengers simply because they have not been paid their overtime pay. They are angry and aggrieved that the government’s promise to give them the Express Lane Fees (ELF) has not materialized.
ELF is the money the airport immigration collects for every foreigner who want to fast-track transactions.
But President Duterte vetoed the use of ELF. The money went to the National Treasury but the government said that ELF be placed in a “trust fund.”
The President said the trust fund will exist until Congress has enacted a new Immigration Modernization Law that will upgrade the Bureau of Immigration’s compensation system.
However, Finance Secretary Benjamin Diokno did not act on it.
It is, however, the hapless air carriers who are taking the brunt for all the troubles the absent immigration employees have imposed on passengers.
It is a pity that flag carrier Philippine Airlines (PAL), trying all its might to improve its performance record, is one of those air carriers being victimized by the immigration people’s abhorrent behavior.
The passengers’ complaints flood PAL, either for having missed their flights or for the numbing time wasted at the queue, thinking it was the airline’s fault.