The Bureau of Immigration (BI) introduced on Thursday its P329-million electronic gate system, or e-gate, which is expected to enhance and lessen the air travelers clearing time.
BI officials said the e-gate, an initiative introduced by the International Air Transport Association called Fast Travel program, will simplify and efficiently improve travelers’ clearing processes.
The e-gate also “aims to provide the agency with efficiency and accuracy on pinpointing citizens under watch list and/or persons of interest in immigration formalities.” It will enhance clearing time of each traveler and reduce human errors in the process of clearing, the BI added.
The new technology is initially for Filipino citizens at arrival formalities.
Marc Red Mariñas, BI’s Port Operations Division chief, said that with e-gate, the standard processing time for a passenger to be cleared at an immigration counter is 45 seconds.
He said there are 21 units of e-gates installed at four international airports in the country. These are the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 1 with five e-gates; Terminal 3 with six; Mactan-Cebu International Airport with five; Clark International Airport with three; and Davao International Airport with two.
Mariñas, however, said the queue time may take longer depending on the primary or secondary requirements of individual passengers.
BI Commissioner Jaime Morente said that the Naia 3 e-Gate was launched on July 18. To be able to avail of e-Gate passage, the BI chief said that arriving Filipinos must have machine readable passports.
For secondary inspections, duty supervisors and secondary officers are stationed nearby in attention for signals or red light from the e-Gates.
The use of e-Gates is also expected to enhance the agency’s security capability through additional security checks, facial recognition, biometric scanning, bar code reader, and smart card recognition all rolled into one system.