No vacation leaves for immigration staff during holidays
MANILA, Philippines — The Bureau of Immigration has banned its staff manning international airports from going on leave during the holidays, in anticipation of an increase in passenger volume.
The bureau on Thursday said Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente reiterated its standing policy, prohibiting employees deployed in different ports from filing vacation leaves from December 1 to Jan. 15, 2022.
During this period, only application for leave for medical and emergency reasons will be entertained.
“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,” Morente added.
Carlos Capulong, BI ports operations chief, has also tapped immigration supervisors and officers assigned as administrative staff at the airport to be part of the on-call officers to augment staff rendering supervisory and primary inspection duty at the airports.
“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,” Capulong added.
The BI earlier this week said they recorded a 72% drop in arriving passengers in the first three quarters this year, compared with the same period in 2020. Records showed that only 893,886 international travelers arrived in the Philippines from January to September.
In the first nine months of 2020, BI data showed 3.2 million passengers came to the country, with 2.8 million of these arriving before the lockdown was imposed in March. — Kristine Joy Patag
- Latest
- Trending
