Solon mulls integration of DA, DENR, DoE

Western Samar Rep. Mel Senen Sarmiento yesterday raised the need to streamline the bureaucracy because of duplication and redundancies of certain functions and mandate of some government agencies that has resulted in an endless blame game in times of crisis and controversy.

Sarmiento said that there need to synchronize and harmonize the function of the entire bureaucracy to ensure efficiency and practicality as he observed that there are obvious redundancies on the function and mandate of certain departments such as the Department of Agriculture (DA) and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).

Sarmiento said that these departments which are involved in resource utilization and resource conservation are inevitably in constant conflict because of their overlapping functions and one possible step to resolve this is to integrate them into a single department.

Sarmiento cited the unabated poaching and smuggling of the country’s natural wealth, and even the massive fish kill that devastated the lives of many fishing communities as among the many examples of the present redundancies and the overlapping of functions in the bureaucracy.

“We are constantly confronted with a situation when no one in the bureaucracy is taking the responsibility each time the government is embroiled in some controversy. In the black coral smuggling controversy, people from the DENR, the Philippine Coast Guard, the local government unit and the Bureau of Customs are passing the blame on each other for their failure to detect the massive poaching of the endangered corals,” Sarmiento said.

“The same is true in the case of the massive fish kill in Batangas and Pangasinan as the the local government units blame the Bureau of Fisheries for the overcrowding of the fish cages and vice-versa. What is needed therefore is to have a cohesive and collaborative workplan among all stakeholders in order to end the blame game,” Sarmiento said.

If collaboration does not work especially in a highly political nation like the Philippines, Sarmiento said that one option is to create a single department that deals on resource management and conservation, thereby merging departments like the Da and the DENR, and even possibly the Department of Energy (DoE).

“These agencies are eternally in conflict because there are certain functions of both the DA and the DoE which are already the primary mandate of the DENR especially in the field of conservation and the management of the country’s natural resources,” Sarmiento said.

“In general, we really have a bloated bureaucracy and I really believe that we need to integrate and harmonize our bureaucracy so that it can be more efficient not only in the utilization and management of logistics but also in the delivery of services to our people. We need to integrate our bureaucracy into a single working machine where no part is going against the other so that we can achieve our quest for progress and development,” Sarmiento said.  –Charlie V. Manalo, Daily Tribune