'Hefty OT pay, allowances for airport Customs personnel unnecessary'

MANILA, Philippines - Executives of international airlines operating in the country, particularly at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA), yesterday said that the hefty overtime pay and other allowances being demanded by airport Customs personnel were unnecessary.

A representative from the Board of Airline Representatives (BAR) said that while the Supreme Court may have declared the OT pay for airport customs as constitutional, the additional pay was made unnecessary with the three-shift work schedule implemented by then Customs commissioner Lito Alvarez via a Customs Administrative Order (CAO).

With the 24-hour, three-shift work schedule for the NAIA Customs personnel numbering close to 200, only those working late will be eligible for an extra “night differential pay.”

BAR noted that Alvarez had also decreed in his CAO that the night differential was to be shouldered by the government, and not the international airlines at the NAIA that operate late night or early morning flights.

BAR, in a statement issued last week, called on the government to look into the possible malversation of public funds over the alleged highly irregular withdrawal of some P2 billion in OT and other allowances it paid since the early 1990s.

BAR is contesting the OT as unconstitutional since customs people are government, not airline, employees.

It said that the overtime privilege has also been abused, with customs now charging the airlines also for meals and transport allowances.

“And if four flights come in, they charge four times for the same hour that they were there,” it said.

Just recently, BAR said some of its members received invoices for overtime services although former commissioner Alvarez had already done away with overtime by assigning three-shifts each day.

“We are being coerced to pay because Customs people are so powerful at the airport they could delay our flights for the flimsiest of reasons, and causing passengers a lot of inconvenience,” it said.

In some documented instances, passengers missed their connecting flights abroad because of the delays caused by customs harassment.

“Some OFWs were no longer accepted by their employers who refused to wait for them at the final airport of destination,” BAR said.

BAR said their objection to the imposition of the overtime, meals and transportation allowance issue was heightened after the customs people wanted to double their charges starting in 2005 on grounds that the peso had doubled from P25 from 1995 to P50 per $1.

The Alvarez CAO said “it shall be the responsibility of the concerned district collector/deputy/chief to ensure that adequate number of personnel is assigned for each shift to afford full service to their respective clients’ which in this case are the (international) airlines.”

The KLM Royal Dutch Airlines announced last week that they were stopping their 14-hour nonstop Manila to Amsterdam flight, blaming the “current economic circumstances,” specifically the high “taxes” imposed on airlines by the Philippine government.

KLM “stubbornly” operated the route for eight years before their announcement last week.

KLM general manager for South China Sea Cees Ursem said it had to transform its current nonstop operations between Manila and Amsterdam to one with an intermediate stop in Taipei to pick up passengers.

Before KLM dropped out of the nonstop Manila-Europe route, Lufthansa of Germany ceased its direct flights from Manila to Europe in 2008.