New immigration chief cases the joint

A day after taking his oath as the new head of the Bureau of Immigration (BI), Commissioner Ronaldo Geron spent his first day in office Thursday meeting with the officers and staff.

“This is my first day here and I need to familiarize myself,” said Geron, who went through the various offices at the bureau main office in Intramuros, Manila, meeting with the BI associate commissioners and executive directors.

“The first order of the day is to review the personal complement, staffing and budget. This whole day it’s administrative and personal staff,” he told reporters in an interview. “Tomorrow I will meet with the employees’ union and then next week I’ll tour the airports.”

Asked about his plans for the bureau in the next six months, Geron told reporters to give him a few days as he was still “working on it.”

He said he intends to call for a press conference next week.

Geron said he still has to familiarize himself with the various issues involving the bureau that were raised prior to his appointment.

“I would have to confer with [Justice Secretary Alfredo Benjamin Caguioa],” Geron said. “The Secretary of Justice has given orders and he has issued directives, department orders that I need to see.”

“Every department order will stand until it is revoked by the secretary so we respect that,” he said.

Geron, who also served as provincial administrator in Batangas, said he did not have the chance to meet with the bureau’s former commissioner Siegfred Mison.

“I am extending my hand out to Commissioner Mison. I would want to meet him and seek his advice because he is a good man, he is an officer and a gentleman. I received word about his statement and I am thanking him for the well-wishes that he sent through that statement. I will try to set up a meeting with him at the soonest possible time,” he said.

In a separate statement, Mison welcomed Geron as he encouraged bureau employees to give the new commissioner as much cooperation and teamwork they had given him during his four-and-a-half-year stint at the bureau.

Mison also thanked President Aquino “for giving me the opportunity to serve in his administration and the Filipino people.”

He said he believed “I did what I could to follow the straight path with much dedication expected from any public servant.”

“My sincerest appreciation goes to my coworkers in the bureau and other stakeholders whose collective contribution to our reforms could not have been made without their indispensable participation,” said Mison, who is facing administrative charges for the repeated escape of a Korean fugitive from detention 22 days apart last year. Tina G. Santos