Goodbye NAIA escort services?

Now that the Ninoy Aquino International AIrport (NAIA), our main gateway, is no longer in the hands of the government, its new operator has a golden opportunity to really fix things and I don’t just mean the dirty restrooms, the intermittent air conditioning system or the slow internet.

I also mean all the other shady and unscrupulous activities that NAIA has been known for in recent years and which really need fixing – tanim-bala, dollar-eating security personnel, inflated rental fees, other forms of theft, smuggling, etc. The list goes on and on.

The good news is that I heard from the grapevine that the new operator, San Miguel Corp.-led New NAIA Infrastructure Corp. is indeed determined to fix NAIA – the bad and the ugly, starting with the notorious “escort services” racket.

For the majority of the passengers passing through the airport, it’s easy to miss these escort services and their clients, mostly a bunch of privileged individuals who want to skip the long, dizzying queues or who don’t want to declare the volume and value of the goods they carry. We miss them because we are stuck in the usual lines and these special VIP lanes are far from everyone else.

For arriving passengers, the escort service starts as soon as the passengers disembark. Their escorts wait for them just outside the plane’s door and shepherd them through the usual processes – the Bureau of Immigration and the Bureau of Customs.

Smuggling, human trafficking

And this is where these escorts become really handy. With escorts, the passengers can breeze through Customs, escaping inspection and scrutiny and in the process, are usually able to avoid payment of the right duties and taxes.

It’s a win-win situation for both escort and passenger but it leaves a major dent in state coffers. The passengers pay their escorts a certain fee but significantly lower than what they would have to pay if they went through Customs.

Some of these passengers are those who smuggle small luxury items which can fit in a few suitcases, including one’s carry-on luggage. These may include jewelry, luxury bags and shoes or expensive timepieces from abroad.

Some recruitment agencies also tap the services of escorts so they can recruit more workers without complying with all the requirements.

This leads to human trafficking at times or abuse of the recruited Filipino worker.

It’s also an extortion racket for some individuals. Last year, a report by GMA-7 showed that escort services at NAIA can cost P150,000.

A seafarer was supposed to go on a vacation in Paris, France last Aug. 7, 2022 but was offloaded several times. A Bureau of Immigration personnel offered him escort service for P150,000, according to the GMA-7 report.

As it turned out, such escort services are also used to extort money from hapless Filipinos traveling abroad.

Who are these escort services? Sources said they can be airport personnel as well as staff of government agencies operating in airports.

In some instances of course, there are VIPs and dignitaries who are really accorded escort services for security reasons and for the usual courtesy given to such individuals.

But there are those who hire escorts because they simply want to get through our chaotic airport in a breeze. They need escorts every time they fly in and out of the country because they feel their time is more important than other passengers – they are the usual politicos, businessmen, fixers and other people in power.

They’re also usually the ones who hire police escorts when they’re traveling by land or in the busy streets of Metro Manila.

If you’re a motorist who regularly drives through the daily traffic, you may have encountered them because their escorts have cut through your lane so their convoy can pass through.

It’s the same in NAIA. These passengers just want to get ahead of others, never mind that they’re just flying to an Asian neighbor to go shopping, get botox or watch an F1 race.

In any case, it’s good that, as the grapevine said, the new NAIA operator is cracking down on these rackets. It’s not going to be easy for sure because when one tries to reform dysfunctional systems or those marred with unscrupulous rackets, such changes are sure to hurt those benefiting from the status quo. Feathers will be ruffled and syndicates will lose business.

They won’t like it and they’ll surely fight it.

Thus, it will take courage and political will to implement such changes.

International protocols

As for our dignitaries, what the SMC-led consortium can do is to follow international benchmarks.

There are global protocols for both local officials as well as visiting dignitaries, heads of states, ambassadors and royal families which NNIC, as our new airport operator, can follow.

The problem that the new airport consortium might face, however, is that here in the Philippines, those in the halls of power believe that they should be considered royalty – kings, queens, princes and princesses – even if in reality, they’re actually just emperors with no clothes.

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Email: [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @eyesgonzales. Column archives at EyesWideOpen on FB.