Gov’t agencies warned against Anti-Red Tape law

One of the signs that prove a government office is efficient is that people don’t fall in line to get their documents or papers or anything of that sort. Long queues at a government office are bad omen as people thought that something fishy is going on inside that office.

According to Aurora Rep. Juan Edgardo Angara, red tape could be the cause of such long queues and that that office could be liable for red tape.

Angara, chairman of the House committee on higher education, said that government offices should comply with Republic Act 9485 or the Anti-Red Tape Act of 2007.

The Aurora lawmaker said that the law obliges government offices to hold regular time-and-motion studies in order to cut the time needed to issue permits and licenses.

Angara said the law also requires all public offices to constantly review the time it would take them to process requests for licenses, permits and other public documents. Among those agencies that are plagued with long queues are the Land Transportation Office, the National Census and Statistics Office, the Department of Social Welfare and Development, the Department of foreign Affairs and the Philippine Overseas and Employment Administration.

The lawmaker urged Malacañang to take notice of which agencies have been hosting long queues of applicants for government-issued documents and to pressure them into accelerating the processing time by giving them deadlines.

“I think it‘s time for the Palace to come up with a compliance scorecard in eradicating red tape,” Rep. Sonny Angara said.

“But corollary to this, is the extension of services and even budgetary support to help agencies overcome their difficulties. If the long lines and processing time are caused by lack of equipment or personnel, for example, then government should arrange funding for their acquisition,” Angara said.

Philippines ranked 148th (out of 183 countries) in the Ease of Doing Business Index, an international study annually conducted by International Finance Corp. (IFC) and the World Bank.

Its neighboring countries, Singapore and Hong Kong, on the other hand, placed 1st and 2nd respectively.

In the study, factors such as simpler set of regulations and measures for protecting creditors and investors, among others are taken into account.

It should be noted that in the same study, Philippines ranked 156th in the Starting A Business category, with 15 procedures to do business, while Singapore, which ranked 4th, only requires three procedures.

The lawmaker also said that the government’s failure to monitor the implementation of RA 9845 has led to the “fossilization of red tape in some sectors of the bureaucracy as exemplified by the well-publicized case of a Filipina journalist who spent three days to secure an exit clearance from the POEA.”

“If it takes less than a day for an OFW to fly to Europe but two days for her paper to move from one desk to another in the POEA building, then there’s something wrong in the way the government is serving to its people,” he said.

“In this age of the internet, why should documents move in a turtle’s pace in public offices?” Angara asked.

Angara maintained that Malacañang should assign a point person to address the processing problems in agencies like the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) whose issuance of clearances have lately been delayed due to the overwhelming volume of applicants. –Gerry Baldo, Daily Tribune