BI deploys 99 newly-hired immigration officers to Naia

FILE- Passengers that just arrived in NAIA Terminal 1 line up behind the yellow lines of immigration counters. Immigration officers at NAIA have been told to avoid being absent from duty in anticipation of more passengers during the holiday season. PHOTO/Lyn Rillon, PDI

Close to a hundred newly-hired immigration officers have been deployed at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia) at the height of the peak travel season, the Bureau of Immigration (BI) announced on Tuesday.

BI commissioner Jaime Morente said that 99 immigration officers have reported to their assigned shifts and terminals at NAIA after completing their four-month training at the Philippine Immigration Academy in Clark, Pampanga.

The newly-hired officers, Morente said, were “young and idealistic men and women who are all eager to assume their new roles as gatekeepers of the country.”

“As a result of their deployment, these long queues of passengers at our immigration counters at the airport will be reduced, if not totally eliminated,” the BI chief said in a statement.

Meanwhile, BI port operations division chief Marc Red Mariñas said that about 20 immigration officers have been reassigned from Kalibo Airport in Aklan to either NAIA or Mactan Cebu International Airport due to the closure of Boracay island.

“Boracay’s shutdown, which prompted the airlines to suspend their flights to Kalibo, has enabled the BI to temporarily reassign its personnel previously deployed there to other ports where their services are equally needed,” Mariñas said.

The fielding of more immigration officers to the NAIA would ensure that the bureau has adequate manpower to serve the traveling public during the peak travel season, he added.

“The personnel deployment could not have come at a more opportune time, considering that passenger volume at the NAIA has been gradually mounting in the past several days,” Mariñas noted.