MANILA, Philippines — Admitting that the basic monthly pay of immigration employees is “extremely low,” Malacañang has issued a memorandum augmenting their pay to ensure efficient and unhampered delivery of services.

The augmentation pay of immigration personnel is contained in Memorandum Order No. 24 signed by Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea last July 13.

In the order, Medialdea noted that the Philippine Immigration Act has not been updated since it was passed in 1940. As a result, the compensation system of immigration personnel has not been upgraded.

“The basic monthly pay of Bureau of Immigration (BI) employees has remained extremely low in spite of the nature of their work, thereby leading to a large number of resignations and causing prejudice to the efficient delivery of frontline services,” the memorandum read.

“There is a need for an interim measure to augment the salaries of BI employees, in recognition of the indispensability of their functions, the apparent disparity between the basic pay of BI employees and employees of agencies performing comparable functions and to promote the continuous and unhampered delivery of basic government services,” the memorandum added.

Concerns about their low monthly salary and overtime pay prompted some BI employees to skip work last year, resulting in long queues at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport.

The controversy started after President Duterte vetoed a provision in the 2017 budget allowing BI to use express lane fees to pay for the overtime hours rendered by its personnel and the salary of contractual workers.

In his veto message for this year’s budget, Duterte announced that he would back the creation of a trust fund from express lane fees and charges collected by the BI for the salaries and overtime work of its employees. Memorandum Order No. 24 enumerated the guidelines for the establishment of the trust fund.

Under the memorandum, express lane fees and charges collected by the BI shall be deposited in a special trust fund account with a government bank. The collection will comprise the Express Lane Fund (ELF).

More than half or 64 percent of the ELF will be used to augment the salaries of BI’s organic personnel who render service beyond regular office hours.

A quarter or 25 percent of the fund will be used to pay for the salaries of BI’s contractual personnel while 11 percent will be remitted to the National Treasury as income of the general fund.

Medialdea also noted that the 2018 budget entitles immigration organic personnel to augmentation of salaries if they render overtime services.

An immigration administrative order issued this year, meanwhile, provides that the monthly augmentation pay of organic personnel who render services beyond office hours shall be determined based on the designation of personnel, the amount of monthly ELF collections and the total number of organic personnel.

The memorandum also called for the immediate release of the augmentation pay for entitled organic personnel covering the months of January to May this year.

The payment augmentation scheme will be implemented until the end of the year or until the passage of the proposed Immigration Modernization Law, which would increase the base pay rates of BI personnel.