The Bureau of Immigration (BI) announced yesterday the deployment of 67 newly-hired immigration officers to the country’s international airports following their completion of a six-month long training program.

Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente said the hiring of new staff is part of the agency’s continuous effort to improve its efforts.

“The graduation of the officers is timed prior to the projected influx of passengers in airports in the next few months for the upcoming Southeast Asian Games, and at the same time as the holiday rush begins,” Morente said.

He said the new recruits studied the Border Control Officers Module (BCOM), a six-month long training designed to teach immigration laws, rules, and procedures.

“The 67 graduates, consisting of 38 females and 29 males, were divided into two classes. They began training at the Philippine Immigration Academy in Clark, Pampanga last April. After three months, they were assigned at the airports and BI’s main office for another three months as on-the-job trainees,” Morente added.

The BI chief further shared that aside from the usual lectures, this is the first time that a Disaster and Emergency Preparedness Response seminar was included in the program.

“This kind of training adheres with the changing times. We want our officers to be fully prepared in the field even during emergency situations,” he explained.

BI-Port Operations Division (POD) chief Grifton Medina disclosed that all graduates signed a minimum two-year lock-in contract with the POD to be able to address the problem of congestion in our airports,

“We want the concept of genuine public service to be inculcated in our frontliners. We need them to be committed mentally and physically to the job,” Medina added.