While officials of the country’s premier airport are feeling the heat, porters are getting burned by the “tanim-bala” (bullet-planting) scam.

They are pushing empty carts and are shooed away by angry travelers who apparently see them as part of the widely publicized extortion racket that have victimized the elderly and hard-working overseas Filipino workers.

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There are around 200 porters in the four terminals of Ninoy Aquino International Airport (Naia).

Porferio Lavado Jr., 42, who has pushed carts for 17 years, lamented: “We are really affected. The passengers must understand that this is our livelihood and we will not do anything to lose their trust,” Lavado told the Inquirer in Filipino.

“We rely on them to survive,” he said.

Lavado was among a group of Naia workers cited in August for their honesty in a bid to polish the image of the gateway to the nation as a nest of crooks, chiselers and opportunists. He had returned in July a clutchbag containing some P120,000 worth of assorted foreign currency to a traveler who had mislaid it.

“We have everything to lose and nothing to gain if we went around planting bullets like they accuse us of,” he said, stressing that if there had been unscrupulous persons in their ranks, they were immediately fired.

On Monday around noon, the Inquirer witnessed an argument between a 52-year-old porter and a female passenger who had just arrived at the Naia Terminal 1.

As the porter approached with a cart to offer his help with her luggage, she snapped: “Get away from me. I don’t want you to plant any bullet on me.”

The porter lost his temper and answered back: “We only carry carts. We don’t have guns. We do not do that. Don’t look down on us.”

He walked away even as the irate passenger went on with her tirade.

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“I’ve been getting that since last night. Some of them treat us like that, like we have some disease. The others joke about it but it still hurts us. We are not criminals,” he said.

A 60-year-old porter who has worked at the Naia for 12 years, said the attendants bore the brunt of public anger at the scandal.

“We somehow got implicated in all that. Even if we are told about the bullet thing as a joke, it hurts us a lot,” he said.

He said that from an average of 20 passengers over a 24-hour period, the number of those who accepted offers of help was now down to 10 since the alleged racket went viral on social media.

“It is a disaster for us,” a 55-year-old porter piped in, explaining that the P20 should have been about P700 in the seven hours he had been on duty before.

“We are not doing anything wrong. This is our only means of livelihood,” he said, expressing the hope that public would not treat them so harshly.

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