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Friday, March 29, 2024

Overtime pay for BI illegal, says Budget

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BUDGET Secretary Benjamin Diokno has turned down a proposal from Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II to temporarily allow the use of funds collected from the airport express lanes to pay overtime to personnel manning the immigration counters.

More than 30 immigration personnel have resigned due to unpaid overtime and 50 others have filed leaves of absence, resulting in long queues at the airport, where passengers must stand in line for more than an hour before being processed by an immigration officer.

In a Cabinet meeting Monday night, Aguirre asked the Department of Budget and Management for temporary relief until and amended immigration law is enacted.

“There should be really a bill in Congress to address this problem on overtime pay of the Immigration officers,” Aguirre said.

However, Diokno rejected the proposal, saying it would be illegal and would violate the General Appropriations Act for 2017, Aguirre said.

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In December, President Rodrigo Duterte vetoed the use of express lane charges collected by the BI for the payment of salaries of casual and contractual personnel, as well as for overtime pay. Last year, BI personnel were paid P784 million for overtime, which was five times more than their basic salaries.

Under the law, Diokno said, overtime pay must not exceed 50 percent of their regular pay.

Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno

Also under the 2017 national budget, funds collected from the express lanes will now go to the National Treasury.

The DBM has created 887 new positions for the bureau and also allotted P224.835 million to pay for the extra work rendered by the immigration officers, but Aguirre said this amount would only allow a maximum of P5,000 in overtime pay of each immigration personnel.

“The unpaid overtime pay reached P2 billion, that’s why the DBM was questioning it,” Aguirre said.

Aguirre earlier warned that the shortage of immigration personnel at the airport could hurt national security.

As a temporary contingency measure, Aguirre has directed the BI to deploy additional officers at the major airports for the influx of passengers during the Holy Week.

A number of college students undergoing on-the-job-training were employed by the Bureau of Immigration to take the place of immigration personnel who resigned and for those who filed a six month-long vacation leave due to the non-payment of their overtime pay.

The Manila International Airport Authority expressed apprehension that the lack of BI personnel at the airport would cause flight delays, particularly this Lenten season as thousands of overseas Filipino workers, balikbayans and foreign tourists are expected to arrive to spend their summer vacation in the country.

A BI official who asked anonymity said that hundreds of BI’s confidential agents and even regular employees were not reporting for work due to the non-payment of their overtime pay since January this year, causing backlogs and affects processing of documents of foreigners wanting to expedite their travel documents.

“The BI seems to be taking advantage of the students to replace BI employees who are not reporting for work,” a BI official told the Manila Standard.

He said it would be unfair for OJTs to do the work since they do not receive any compensation from the BI.

OJT provides opportunities college students to gain practical experience and work-based training course.

The only reward these students get are certification of attendance, the source said.

Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente could not be reached for comment.

The bureau retrenched more than 900 BI employees last January after President Duterte disallowed the use of revenues collected from the bureau’s express lane fund.

The bureau has collected more than P1.2 billion annually from express lane fees—the only source of money to pay for the salaries of confidential agents as well as for overtime services rendered by BI personnel.

The Palace echoed Diokno’s view that the immigration officials were to blame for the long queues at the country’s airports because they chose to stick to an old overtime pay system that the Budget Department says is illegal.

Presidential Spokesman Ernesto Abella said that the executive branch has already provided a solution to the lack of personnel in the BI but officials simply chose to ignore them in favor of using funds collected from express lane charges to cover the salaries of casual and contractual personnel, as well as overtime and health insurance.

“Based on results, by not acting on the suggestion of the DBM, we have these queues that [we are] talking about,” Abella said.

“The burden of response is now upon the BOI officials. They have not accepted it. They choose to stick to their guns about overtime pay,” Abella said.

Abella urged Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente to resolve the stand-off in his agency.

Abella said the creation of new positions is enough to increase the number of immigration officers to address the current problem.

Also on Tuesday, Diokno said that he will propose a personal and financial audit in the Bureau of Immigration to look into the use of “express lane charges” in the agency.

“I will request personal audit from the Civil Service Commission and the financial audit from the Commission on Audit…how much was collected for the last five, six years and where did the money go? Give me a list of people who received the money,” Diokno said.

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