By RHENZ SALONGA
The Bureau of Immigration (BI) shared that the international arrival and departure processing was smooth sailing during the Christmas season.
BI Commissioner Jaime Morente said that while a handful of flights were added, the volume of passengers remained manageable during Christmas eve and on December 25.
Morente shared that the arrival cap of inbound passengers remained at 4,000 due to the Omicron variant, hence the BI did not expect a significant rise in the number of travelers.
“Nevertheless, our manpower is in full force during the holiday season to ensure speedy processing in case there is a rise in the number of arriving and departing passengers,” said Morente.
BI Port Operations Division Chief Atty. Carlos Capulong shared that frontliners were temporarily barred from filing vacation leaves during the holiday season, and that they have a rapid response team on standby to be activated as needed.
Last year, the BI was able to tally only more than 152,000 arrivals for the entire December, a far cry from pre-pandemic figures of 1.7 million.
“Earlier this month we have recorded that 85% of arriving passengers are Filipinos, many of which are OFWs and balikbayan coming home for the holidays,” said Capulong. “Despite the lower number of travelers, we remain on duty to ensure that arrival and departure formalities are performed efficiently for the traveling public,” he added.
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