By Recto Mercene
A GREAT majority of the 736- strong Philippine Air Traffic Controllers Association (Patca) will report for work wearing black on Friday to dramatize their demand for the government to address their many woes.
The problems, Patca said, have demoralized the air controllers so much that many of them are now leaving for jobs abroad or are planning to leave.
The Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (Caap) earlier reported that it needs more air-traffic controllers owing to the growth of the travel industry and the opening of new airports or the upgrading of existing ones.
“The action is meant to draw the attention of the concerned government agencies to resolve our problems as we express our demoralization and discontent,” Patca President Rudy Boctot said.
Patca’s appeal is for the Caap to stop the Commission on Audit (COA) from taking back the various salary increases, allowances and other benefits they received during the past years.
A notice of disallowance had been sent by the COA to each Patca employees.
“Once again the country’s air- traffic controllers will be wearing black attire or at least wear black arm bands when they report for work on Friday to express to the government the need to be heard and to address their plight,” Patca said.
The group said it has been on its fourth week of silent protest “to impress upon Caap management the need for a swift, mature, achievable, rational and transparent action.”
The hiring of air-traffic service and air-navigation service personnel, as well as flight inspectors, was made on job-order basis.
They were hired as “air-traffic management assistants” as all entry plantilla positions were already filled by regular air-traffic contol and airways communicators from the defunct Air Transportation Office.
As new hires, these employees are not entitled to paid leaves of absence, burial benefits, bonuses, allowances, night differentials, overtime pay, trainings for advancement and more.
“Some of them have been on job-order hires for eight years, supposedly under a ‘no employer-employee relationship’ and paid on a piece-meal basis,” the group said in a statement. “In reality, however, these job-order assistants are actually performing the work of a regular employee holding a plantilla position and are counted as part of the shift complement.”
Patca said the nonregular hires now comprise one half of the shift complement, “and without them, the shift cannot function properly, or worse, will have to close shop.”
These highly technical employees said they have been fearful for their jobs as the COA told them to return the money they received as performance allowance and recognition award, including the Anniversary Awards of 2013 and 2014. They said the COA threatened them with suspension of their salary scales owing to absence of a Presidential approval of their positions.
“In all probability, the COA will issue similar Notices of Suspension for the years 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 if the Caap cannot obtain the said approval,” the association said, adding that the objective is to get back six months’ worth of salaries, salary differentials that started in 2012, following the implementation of the new salary scales.
The employees said a conservative estimate of the money that must be refunded per COA order is about P1 million per technical employee, “monies which were freely offered and received in good faith and which have long been spent and consummated.”
They said their salaries are not sufficient to absorb the expected payback of as much as P10,000 per month.
Patca members and Caap employees were promised by Caap Director General William K. Hotchkiss of new pay scales and bonuses if they were able to remove the significant safety concerns of the International Civil Aviation Organization, the lifting of the European Union ban on Philippine carriers, and the reinstatement to Category 1 by the Federal Aviation Administration.
Hotchkiss wrote President Aquino to request confirmation of the bonuses that have already been given to its employees, but the letter was forwarded to the government legal counsel, that required the Caap to comply with various requirements.
A request by the Caap for an audience with the President Aquino remains pending.
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This concern is not just limited to the ATCs, but also of CNSSOs of CAAP as well. CNSSOs (Communication, Navigation and Surveillance Systems Officers) are the ones working to keep the equipments (being used by the ATCs and the Pilots, i.e., Radio, VOR, DME, ILS, RADAR, etc.) to be available 24/7.