The Bureau of Immigration (BI) over the weekend assured the public that it had deployed adequate personnel to serve passengers of repatriation and special flights at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) despite the extended enhanced community quarantine caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Immigration Commissioner Jaime Morente said in a statement the bureau had enough manpower to cater to the needs of the passengers on special flights. He said their skeletal deployment had three shifts per day to attend to the passengers, mostly overseas Filipino workers stranded abroad. Meanwhile, BI Port Operations Division chief Grifton Medina said on Good Friday over 1,400 Filipinos, all of them seafarers, arrived at the NAIA. Immigration officers processed their documents after going through health inspection by the Bureau of Quarantine. He said a sweeper flight by Philippine Airlines flew out of the NAIA to London last Tuesday with 290 British passengers on the said flight. Medina said PAL had notified the bureau that it would be flying three more sweeper flights this week to ferry stranded citizens of Canada and Australia. Medina said the bulk of those who arrived were Filipinos numbering 11,660 while the rest were foreigners totaling 581. There were 5,831 foreigners and 1,728 Filipinos who departed during the same period.
