‘… we don’t seem to know how to make life easier for ordinary folks: easier to pay taxes, easier to commute, easier to get health care, easier to communicate with others, and easier to live.’
THIS is something I am sure those who travel can easily relate to.
Imagine yourself arriving at the international airport in Bangkok (Suvarnabhumi) or Hong Kong (Chek Lap Kok) or even Singapore (Changi). You disembark from your vehicle, grab your bags and move toward the entrance of the building. As a Filipino, you’ll stop.
Where’s the guard who will check your ticket and ID card?
You stand there for a minute then shrug your shoulders and finally decide to enter anyway and head for the check-in counter. You go through the process and then line up for immigration. Again, you pause and wait for a guard to check your boarding pass and passport; no one. So you proceed and line up before an immigration counter or an electronic machine. In Bangkok, you also go through an X-ray machine but not so in Singapore.
Then you’re done with immigration and you’re free to roam the terminal cognizant of how big the terminal is and knowing that if you wander far from your gate you need to double back when the time comes.
In Singapore, when you finally decide to go to the departure gate you need to pass an X-ray and a document check.
The last check is at the door of the plane where a flight attendant guides you where to go.
It all seems so seamless. In contrast…
We seem to be obsessed with document checks. When you arrive at, say, for domestic departure — note that this is domestic — at NAIA terminal 2 there are guards at the door who expect you to flash your ticket or boarding pass before you can enter. This is not even done in the international departure terminals in the three cities I mentioned above.
Then to check in, your documents are checked, of course, and your pass is issued. Then you move towards the X-ray. And as you get there, again a guard is expecting you to flash your boarding pass and ID and only after that do you go through the X-ray and finally into the departure area. And two more times: as you get past the boarding gate counter, they take your boarding pass and tear off a part, and then again as you enter the aircraft you show the pass to the steward so he or she can guide you where to go.
In my count, there’s at least one extra ID check in the Philippines — the one at the door of the terminal buildings — which is not done abroad. Again, note that we do this even at domestic terminals while they don’t see the need to do it even in international terminals.
Why?
There could be several reasons with varying levels of validity.
First, we do not trust Filipinos to go to the airport only when they are flying out. Maybe we think Filipinos have it in them to wake up at 2 a.m. to drive to the NAIA Terminal 2 at 3 a.m. so they can wander around the departure area because they have nothing better to do at that time of day.
Maybe it’s meant to hold back that horde of relatives and friends who will want to see someone off. Imagine all of them milling inside the departure check-in counter area.
Maybe it’s because we need to give some people something to do and something to earn from.
Maybe it’s also because we suspect that some Filipinos will try to impersonate others just to travel, even domestically, though this is addressed at the check-in counters.
Or maybe it’s just because we don’t know how to run airports and I guess this is the most valid reason.
We don’t seem to know how to make life easier for ordinary folks: easier to pay taxes, easier to commute, easier to get health care, easier to communicate with others, and easier to live. Even in business: I’ve heard of so many attempts to set up “one-stop shops” for this or that purpose, to make doing business easier. But have they been of any success?
As long as we are so slow in smoothing things out and assuring the ease of doing things in our country, we will always fall short of our goals. Things like extra and unnecessary ID checks will always serve as bureaucratic bumps and roadblocks along the way.
