BI ‘loses’ P869M due to a misunderstanding

In a frantic bid to stave off a firestorm and appease the natives, which was occasioned by an embarrassing report from the Commission on Audit (CoA) recently regarding huge revenue losses incurred last year by the Bureau of Immigration (BI), Malacañang is now expediting moves to increase the “extremely low” salaries of its personnel.

Such unreasonably low pay scales (considering the escalating costs of literally all things resulting mainly from the ill-advised TRAIN law), has forced many employees to increasingly skip work, if not resign from the service altogether, thereby compromising the delivery of efficient frontline services in the country’s numerous international ports of entry, as demonstrated by the interminable queues and delays experienced by travelers at the departure and arrival areas of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport.

In a memorandum released only last month, Executive Secretary (ES) Salvador Medialdea said there is an urgent need to increase the salaries of BI personnel due to the indispensability of their functions and the disparity between their pay as compared to the employees of other government agencies performing similar work.

The Philippine Immigration Act of 1940 dictating the compensation schedule for BI workers has never been updated by Congress, which is why their salaries have likewise never been upgraded to keep in step with the spiraling rate of inflation. One must understand that today’s P1 cannot purchase the amount of goods that P1 did in 1940.

The ES said this is in line with the wishes of President Duterte for the creation of a “trust fund” from the express lane fees generated by the BI, as embodied in Memorandum 24 signed last 13 July 2018.

However, all the trouble started when Mr. Duterte, in his Budget Veto Message dated 22 December 2016, forbade BI officials from utilizing the funds collected in the express lane due to the erroneous information given to him that this was being abused by certain people. Little did he know that the monies were spent for payment of salaries of casual and contractual personnel, confidential agents and job order employees, as well as overtime pay and for health insurance premiums of BI employees.

Thus, we’re told, Medialdea was rendered totally speechless when he was furnished a copy of the 2017 CoA audit report which found out that the BI “lost” P869 million (that’s correct, it lost P869 million!) in uncollected express lane fees, which sent him into scramble mode to rectify the situation.

This anomaly came about when the BI, then under the supervision of Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre, stopped collecting all express lane fees in June 2017 after learning that the appeal for reconsideration filed in Malacañang to reverse Duterte’s ban order was going straight into the shredder.

But the CoA said this course of action was wrong because “it is only the use of express lane charges that was vetoed by the President and not the collection of express lane charges.”

Somebody goofed in interpreting Mr. Duterte’s order — and it isn’t the incumbent Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra who only assumed the reins of office in April 2018 when Aguirre controversially resigned from the Cabinet over several embarrassing issues.