With the integrity of the Office for Transportation Security (OTS) eroded by extortion and theft claims against its men, five of the agency’s personnel were honored on Monday for acts of honesty along with 32 other airport workers.
A sixth screening officer of the OTS, an attached agency of the Department of Transportation and Communications (DoTC), who found and turned over to the airport police a passenger’s forgotten bag containing US$3,000 (approximately P140,000) was not yet among Monday’s praise awardees at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA).
Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA) general manager Jose Angel Honrado commended OTS security screening officers Lorben Maravillo, Rodolfo Bihasa, Jerome Fullido, Mark Lester Golena and Aaron Parajas.
The OTS personnel were among airport workers, mostly those assigned at maintenance and security guards, who are “the heroes that the airport needs today.”
In a statement Honrado said, “We can be heroes in our own simple way… Simply returning the things that are not yours is enough for one to be a modern-day hero.”
The MIAA general manager pointed out that “many find it difficult to practice honesty especially at the airport,” adding that it was truly commendable for workers to remain honest.
Parajas, an OTS intelligence agent aide assigned at the NAIA terminal 2 commended for his honesty, said during the rites that his returning in August a trolley bag containing electronic gadgets, jewelry and important documents was instinctive.
He said that the items were not his to keep and said that he sympathized with the bag’s owner whose trip would be affected. “I felt pity for the owner because just losing his luggage could affect his work and his family,” Parajas pointed out in Filipino.
The OTS employee added that while he was dismayed by allegations that some of his colleagues planted bullets in travellers’ baggage to extort money from them and stole from passengers, he still believed in the integrity of the agency where he has been working for four years.
Meanwhile, another OTS security screening officer, Erwin Bautista, turned over to the MIAA intelligence and investigation division on Friday last week a backpack containing US$3,000 and nearly P2,000.
According to Leo Gonzales, of the MIAA-IID, Bautista was manning the departure area at the north wing’s initial security screening checkpoint at the NAIA terminal 2 on Friday morning when he saw the backpack apparently left behind by a passenger at the x-ray scanner.
Bautista immediately surrendered the recovered bag to the IID officers who conducted an inventory of its contents to ensure they remain intact when they locate the backpack’s owner.
Gonzales said that it was during the inventory that the large amount of foreign currency was found. Members of the IID are still trying to track the owner of the backpack, which is in the NAIA lost and found office’s safekeeping.