Saturday, 11 December 2010 18:32 Recto L. Mercene / Reporter
Business Mirror
A badly needed truce, for now, could yet ease the soaring tensions at the country’s premier international airport, where the onset of the holiday season means a dramatic increase in flights and arrivals and, consequently, more pressures on people and infrastructure.
A 16-month tussle between the Airline Operators Council (AOC) and the airport branch of the Bureau of Customs (BOC) appears to have ended harmoniously after flag carrier Philippine Airlines (Pal) released on Friday a P25-million check worth of five months’ payment for overtime services.
PAL president and CEO Jaime Bautista said they have agreed to pay “as a gesture of goodwill,” and so that the BOC personnel could enjoy Christmas.
“The Court of Appeals has ruled in favor of the Board of Airline Representatives [BAR] that the air carriers do not have to pay, but we came across because we’re aware that some customs employees worked for it,” Bautista explained in an interview at PAL headquarters in Pasay City on Friday. Earlier, the airline group had committed to pay at least five months of the 16-month period in dispute.
BAR, however, said the airlines believe they are overcharged in the P10 million a month billed by the BOC to the carriers, though BAR did not give an estimate on how much the government workers should charge the carriers.
Friday’s announcement of a payment came just in time to avert a disaster at the premier airport that would have had dire implications for the Aquino administration, which is mightily trying to woo investors in the tourism sector.
The AOC has cried foul over the recent withdrawal of services during arrivals at night, when Customs employees did not appear for work to board arriving aircraft, as the law dictates, or simply did not report for duty after office hours, and during weekends and holidays.
The AOC viewed the act as a form of harassment so that airline passengers would lay the blame for late services on the air carriers.
In some instances, Customs personnel would delay the flights, prompting the first vice chairman of BAR, Delta Air country manager Steven Crowdey, to say they would sue the BOC employees if they persist in doing all these.
Crowdey asked BOC Commissioner Angelito Alvarez to stop the planned strike or disruption of service at the airport by his men. He added that the planned work slowdown would set back the country’s bid to attract tourists.
The Philippines remains a laggard in comparison with other Asian countries in terms of arrivals because of the perceived lack of peace and order, limited infrastructure, and the challenges passengers had to face arriving at the Naia, such as opportunistic taxi drivers and criminal syndicates preying on tourists.
No more arrival forms
Irked by the BOC’s alleged harassment, the 30-member AOC later announced that starting January 1, it would no longer supply Customs with arrival cards. It appears that the cards sponsor, Smart, had also withdrawn printing the cards in exchange for a tiny advertisement carried by the documents.
For the last 10 years, the AOC had been supplying the immigration and customs cards free of charge. These cards are shipped by their individual carriers to headquarters abroad for distribution to passengers.
The cessation of the customs declaration form by the AOC was unanimously approved during a general membership meeting at the Naia last week.
The BOC consumes 1.5 million cards a month at the three major airports, the Naia, Diosdado Macapagal International Airport and Cebu-Mactan International Airport. A total of 22 million immigration and customs cards are consumed by passengers annually.
PAL uses up 5 million cards, Cebu Pacific 3 million, and the rest are shared by other AOC members.
Alvarez, seeing the calamitous implications of having to scramble for 1.5 million cards a month, had an emergency meeting with the AOC and Tourism Secretary Bertie Lim, and got assurances that he would be supplied with the cards at least until the end of December 2010.
At the same time, Alvarez said the BoC will hire 78 new workers starting January to work in shifts, like the rest of the airport workers.
“You know, as the saying goes, a calamity could also be an opportunity, so this threat of the airlines to no longer supply us with arrival cards starting January 2011 could be the opportune time for us to review the situation,” Alvarez said.
AOC chairman Ma. Lourdes Reyes lauded Alvarez’s move to hire additional hands to work in three shifts, calling it “a proactive move and an appropriate solution.”
Despite these developments, the Bureau of Immigration (BI) and the Bureau of Quarantine (BQ) will continue receiving overtime pay from the airline companies, because unlike Customs, the BI’s and BQ’s remunerations were mandated by law and not by administrative order. According to sources, the airlines did not feel the urgency to question the nonlegislated imposition on them of the Customs staff’s overtime because, for the longest time, this wasn’t a problem at a time when air travel was growing at a fast clip and the cost of gasoline was cheap.
However, when the cost of gasoline shot up to $100 a barrel about two years ago, and the global financial crisis hit the airline industry, the airlines started to balk at paying, and the overtime pay of the BoC became the first casualty.
Republic Act 503 states that “Immigration employees may be assigned by the Commissioner of Immigration to do overtime work at rates fixed by him when the service rendered is to be paid for by shipping companies and airlines or other persons served.”
The law was enacted at a time when BI officers were mostly serving at the docks, and airline travel was not yet as popular as today.
When the then-Manila International Airport was opened to the public in the early ’50s, BI personnel were paid travel expenses because they had to travel from the South Harbor to the old Balagbag Terminal, where the first MIA passenger terminal was located.
The feud between the Aoc and the BoC started when the latter demanded that their overtime pay, travel expenses and meal allowance be denominated in US dollar, prompting some BAR executives to ask whether they pay in dollars when eating at the Naia restaurants.
To resolve the brewing conflict, the BoC brought the matter to the Finance department and the Executive department, who ruled in favor of the BoC. However, BAR brought the case to the Court of Appeals, and the rest is history.
Alvarez said that for the last 16 months, some personnel have been rendering service beyond office hours, despite the court ruling favoring Bar in its stand not to shoulder the cost of overtime.
“Starting January next year, we will have about 78 new hires who would be assigned at the Naia to work in shift,” Alvarez said, adding that this would circumvent the Civil Service Commission’s ruling of not paying government workers overtime after office hours. However, he added that night differential pay would be enjoyed by those who report for work in 24-hour shift.
Meanwhile, the BI estimated that a total 8 million people would be coming into the country this month to spend the holidays, including balikbayan and overseas Filipino workers on holiday leave. Authorities hope that once the arrivals start surging toward Christmas, the OT conundrum would no longer add to the other problems of a premier airport long ago left behind by its rivals in a region where growth has been robust even when the rest of the world was in the doldrums.
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