Keep P1-B bonuses, CAAP workers told

EMPLOYEES of the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) need not return the nearly P1 billion in benefits they received for three years and which was granted by President Aquino as a reward for restoring the country’s international aviation standing.

The Commission on Audit (COA) and the Governance Commission on Government-owned and -controlled corporations (GCG) had previously disapproved the salary increases and bonuses already handed to the workers since 2012, directing them to repay the amount in full.

In a statement, CAAP Director General William Hotchkiss said the President called him up on Friday to tell him the good news and to instruct him to relay the message to the agency’s 3,500 employees.

He said that on the same day, Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa Jr. issued a memorandum to Transportation Secretary Joseph Emilio Abaya and GCG Chair Cesar L. Villanueva approving the benefits granted to the CAAP personnel.

According to the memorandum, the following bonuses had been approved: Year-end financial assistance pay granted in 2010; performance enhancement allowance granted in 2012; recognition award granted in 2013; achievement bonus granted in 2014, and new salary structure for technical positions effective Oct. 1, 2012.

The bonuses and rates were given in recognition of their achievement of beating civil aviation’s triple whammy: The country’s inclusion in the International Civil Aviation Organization’s list of countries with significant safety concerns; the European Union’s ban on Philippine carriers, and Philippine civil aviation’s downgrade by the Federal Aviation Administration to a category 2 rating.

According to Hotchkiss, the President, in approving the performance incentives and salary increases, stopped the brain drain at the agency. The CAAP has lost a number of technical employees to civil aviation abroad which offer bigger salaries. Jeannette I. Andrade