"This has dragged on for much too long."
"This has dragged on for much too long."
Sometime toward the end of the administration of former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, a group of Customs employees approached me.
They claimed that they belonged to a group of Customs personnel assigned to arriving and departing airlines at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport. They were expected to serve beyond their mandated eight-hour work schedule. Often, they did the additional work late at night and the early hours of the following day.
They told me they had not been given their overtime pay. In the beginning, they were given this, but later on, Customs refused to pay overtime.
I was told there were some 900 Customs personnel affected by this.
Consequently, I took time to investigate, and the Customs collector assigned did file a protest over the unpaid overtime work.
The case was later elevated by the Commissioner of Customs and the Finance secretary to the Office of the Solicitor General to decide what action to take. The SolGen filed a case in court.
The argument of the SolGen was that when government personnel work overtime, beyond their eight-hour official duty, they should be paid overtime. Otherwise, it would be a violation of the law to require government employees to work overtime and not get paid for it.
I followed the case until it reached the Supreme Court. Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio came out with a landmark decision that the Customs and Tariff Code required the payment of those who work overtime to be paid, not by Customs, but by the airlines who benefited from the overtime work.
The amount of unpaid overtime was estimated at P2.1 billion.
The Board of Airline Representatives headed by Philippine Airlines started to quibble on the amount to be paid and even accused the Customs personnel that the amount actually due them was much less.
It came to a point during the Aquino administration when no less than six commissioners took over Customs in succession. None of them ever bothered to compel the BAR to pay. This controversy continued until the end of the Aquino administration. The local and foreign airlines refused to pay overtime.
There was even a move by the Customs personnel to cite the BAR for contempt because the Supreme Court had already decided on the matter.
Strangely, when this happened, the SolGen, the same agency that succeeded in making the airline pay, turned down the contempt charge. This gave rise to the question: On whose side was the SolGen, anyway?
Almost all of the 900 Customs personnel adversely affected by the non-payment of overtime have since retired. Some of them have even died. And still the issue seems to have been forgotten.
You know what Customs did to resolve the issue? It hired people to augment the shortage of personnel. On record, Customs had to spend millions to make overtime duty a thing of the past.
I had wondered why the overtime pay has not been paid after all these years. This has raised questions on the competence of Customs higher ups, and even Finance people have said not to pursue the case.
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The race for the Speakership at the House of Representatives has been narrowed down to Rep. Lord Allan Velasco and Rep. Martin Romualdez. Both have been endorsed by presidential daughter Sara Duterte Carpio.
It seems that the other contenders, Representatives Alan Peter Cayetano and Pantaleon Alvarez, have lost the confidence of their colleagues.
But Romualdez’s CV speaks for itself. He graduated from UP where he took up his LLB and Cornell for his post-graduate studies. He is the president of the Philippine Constitution Association.
Romualdez is a consensus builder. He is somebody who listens. His wife Yedda is now Tingog Party-list representative. He has all the qualities to be the next Speaker of the House.
Speaking of Yedda, I support her appeal to the Senate to give priority to the passage of the bill creating the Department of Disaster Resilience.
The DDR bill has been approved at the House and is now at the Senate.
This will reduce the bureaucratic red tape that has caused delays in the delivery of assistance to disaster victims.
Nobody can argue against the need to provide leadership in disaster mitigation, prevention, preparedness and response, as well as recovery and rehabilitation.
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Malacañang is wasting time and energy giving importance to the habitual liar, Peter Joemel Advincula, also known as Bikoy.
He came out with that video claiming that the Duterte family was receiving drug money. And now he has recanted this claim, pointing to Senator Antonio Trillanes IV.
The Manila Standard editorial said “once a liar, always a liar.” I agree
Advincula, who is facing charges of estafa and illegal recruitment, insults the intelligence of the people.
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