MANILA, Philippines -- While the Air Transportation Office (ATO) is blaming too many vacancies as a key reason for the country's failure to comply with international air safety standards, the reverse seems to be happening inside the Manila Control Tower.

Manila's air traffic controllers (ATCs) are wondering why some of their colleagues could not be given positions their training and skills deserve. Some have been given job titles mismatched with what they actually do while others are simply underemployed.

Several ATCs assigned at the Manila Tower revealed that some of their co-workers perform the same tedious tasks as they do but under a different job title: airways communicator.

?Airways communicators do not control air traffic. They do not make decisions and they are not exposed to as many risks. What they do is relay to pilots what ATCs say. But we have airways communicators who actually work as ATCs,? said Nickson Morada, chair of Philippine Air Traffic Controllers Association.

The 32-staff control tower has at least four ATCs who work under the title of airways communicators as the ATO lacks ATC plantilla positions, according to Morada.

Technically in ?comms? rather than ?control,? these employees have been getting less pay than did other ATCs despite putting in the same amount of work, said Morada.

?Ever since I started my training, I have been training as an ATC. But I was told that that was the plantilla that was available,? said an airways communicator who has been working as an ATC for seven months now.

The employee, who finished an eight-month ATC training at the the ATO's Civil Aviation Training Center in May last year, started working as a controller in July but receive the lower pay of an airways communicator.

Another ATC, meanwhile, said some ATCs have been awaiting formal posting as far back as two years ago, making do with an assignment as ?acting? ATC.

Such situation persists while the ATO says only half of the 7,000 positions in the agency are filled. Officials see these vacancies as a factor in the country's failure to comply with aviation safety standards of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).

ATO officials said in a briefing on Monday that the agency was in need of 700 more ATCs given the high attrition rate in the country's gravely undermanned control towers. The ATO currently has at least 300 ATCs spread around 85 airports.

ATCs in the Manila Tower have been contending with extended work hours and delayed overtime pay, because of such shortage.

The United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) recently rated the country non-compliant with standards of the ICAO and downgraded the Philippines to Category 2 in its latest international safety audit. Besides an antiquated aviation law, the FAA found the ATO's technical personnel underqualified for their jobs.