Former health secretary opts to follow straight path

FOR a man who once served as Health secretary in the Arroyo administration, Francisco Duque 3rd asserted on Thursday that he is following the “daang matuwid [straight path]” of President Bengino Aquino 3rd in his current position as chairman of the Civil Service Commission (CSC).

“The mantra of the current administration is ‘kung walang corrupt walang mahirap’ so ‘yan ang good governance [‘No one is poor if no one is corrupt,’ so that’s what good governance is],” he said during an exclusive roundtable with editors and reporters of The Manila Times, assuring that the commission “is aligned with that [mantra].”

He said that he shares President Aquino’s vision of the CSC as a model of excellence in government [service]. And in response to the President’s call to speed up business procedures in the country, he added that such excellence can be achieved with the proper implementation of the Anti-Red Tape Act [Arta] of 2007.

Duque said that “if the Arta [is] implemented properly by government agencies, transactions in government offices will speed up by limiting the action and time” spent on these, adding that this “will result [in] good governance.”

He said that once Arta is implemented, government agencies will become more efficient and will minimize, if not prevent graft and corruption—the Philippine government’s main problem.

As a way to lessen government corruption, Duque shared with The Times what he called the “Citizen’s Charter”— an instructional-type material which will serve as a guide for applicants in accessing frontline services to promote faster and more transparent service in the bureaucracy.

He claimed that 74 percent of government agencies have already complied in this regard by having their own Citizen’s Charter posted at their respective offices.

The remaining 26 percent, Duque said, are “either in [different] stages of implementation or completing their [own version of it.]”

“The Citizen’s Charter covers frontline services rendered by its central and regional [government] offices, and includes a step-by-step procedure of each service, the fees and requirements needed, and the maximum processing time and the employee responsible for each step,” Duque said.

He also said that agencies and offices providing these services are required to regularly undergo evaluation and modernization of their transaction systems and procedures.

President Aquino said during his State of the Nation Address last July that “the never-ending horror story of registering business names, which used to take a minimum of four to eight hours depending on the day, will be cut down drastically to 15 minutes.”

“I call on our local government units [LGUs] to review its own procedures. While we look for more ways to streamline our processes to make business start-ups easier, I hope the LGUs can also find ways to implement reforms that will be consistent with the ones we have already started.

“All will certainly benefit from this streamlining—be it businessmen, soldiers, rebels and ordinary Filipinos.”

To measure how effective government agencies are, Duque said that these will be “subjected to a Report Card Survey, [which will] be initiated by the commission [and] shall be used to obtain feedback from concerned citizens on how provisions in the Citizen’s
Charter are being followed and how the agency is performing.”

He added that those who received high marks will be given a wall-mountable glass seal award and a cash reward worth P75,000 to P100,000.

In a recent survey conducted by the World Bank and International Finance Corp., the Philippines currently ranks 148th—dropping two notches from its position last year—among 183 countries in terms of ease in doing business.

Hopefully, once the Arta is implemented the way it should be, the country can hope for a reversal in this downward trend—and a step forward in winning the war against corruption. –Marie N. Dela Cruz, Reporter, Manila Times