Immigration chief vows to improve service in 2020

MANILA, Philippines – The Bureau of Immigration (BI) is looking to improve its service delivery for 2020, Commissioner Jaime Morente said on Sunday.

Morente said the innovations that had been put in place in recent years would ensure a better system, as queueing time in the country’s entry and exit points would be reduced to just eight seconds from the usual 45 seconds.

“[This year we] will reap what we have sowed in terms of improvements laid out in the past years,” he said in a statement. “We have laid out numerous improvements for the past years, now it’s time to see how these changes have improved the system.”

According to BI, the 21 electronic gates, or e-gates, installed in major airports nationwide is set to service 250,000 passengers per month, or three million travelers in yearly.  This would comprise roughly 10 percent of all passengers, as BI recorded 32.3 million arrivals and departures for 2019.

“With this growing number of international travelers, there is a need for our numbers to grow as well,” Morente said.  “For 2020, we pray that we be granted more manpower as we are expecting numerous airports to open.  We are also looking into beefing up our manpower for our southern borders.”

Overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) and Filipino citizens were prioritized by the e-gates system, to ensure that the service would benefit taxpayers.  Morente said that they are looking to place e-gates in other smaller airports in the country.

“We are studying expanding this project to other smaller airports, as well as the departure areas for the next few years,” he revealed.

“We wanted to improve how we serve our OFWs who sacrifice themselves for their families, hence we also implemented a special lane for them, and acquired pre-screening equipment for faster and more efficient checking,” he added.

/atm