By JUN RAMIREZ
The Bureau of Immigration (BI) is deploying more than a hundred personnel to the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) and other major ports within the next few months as a fresh batch of newly recruited immigration officers started training this week.
In a report to Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente, BI chief personnel officer Grifton Medina said a total of 101 new employees, with the item of Immigration Officer I, began last Monday their two-month training at the Philippine Immigration Academy in Clark, Pampanga.
Medina said that after their stint at the academy where they will be taught lessons on immigration laws, rules, and procedures, the employees will still undergo a month-long on-the-job training at the airport and main office.
“Be sure that before they are deployed to the ports they are adequately prepared and equipped with the knowledge and capability to perform their jobs as gatekeepers of the country,” Morente told Medina.
Morente also instructed the BI Center for Training and Research headed by lawyer Ronaldo Ledesma and Supervisor Administrative Officer Thelma Guiritan to “administer written and oral tests to the trainees in order to ascertain if they are ready to become our country’s gatekeepers.”
BI port operations division chief Marc Red Mariñas said the hiring of the new immigration officers could not have happened at a more opportune time as they would be deployed to the NAIA in time for the implementation of the government’s rationalization program at the premiere port.
The rationalization scheme involves the shutdown of international flight operations at the NAIA 2 terminal, which will serve as Manila’s main domestic airport, and the operation of all international flights at the NAIA 1 and 3 terminals.
