Wednesday, October 01, 2008 Valdehuesa: Common sense, inefficiency, poor governance By Manuel Valdehuesa Street talk
Time and again, the behavior of government illustrates how uncommon is common sense, how common is inefficiency, and how elusive is good governance.
Last week, department of health (DOH) officials swooped down on supermarkets and large grocery stores in search of contaminated candy and foodstuff from China.
Of course they found none. They went to shopping centers with reputations to protect. It didn't occur to them that malls and supermarkets are not likely to ruin business by selling goods already declared worldwide as harmful. Common sense would have led them to obvious outlets of banned items -- market stalls, street hawkers, hole-in-the-wall retailers, sidewalk vendors.
Fortunately, as Sun Star reported, someone from the city council had the good sense of checking the latter and, sure enough, he found some at Cogon market.
But what did he do? Instead of taking precautionary action, like temporary seizure or sequestration, he announced that his committee would invite the bureau of food and drugs (BFAD) people "to shed light on this matter." As for the offending candy and foodstuff, he merely requested the mayor to form a "task force" to handle the problem.
In so doing, he (1) causes the BFAD officials to be distracted from their job as he summons them to his session hall, (2) lets the contraband remain for unsuspecting customers to buy, and (3) leaves the rest of the problem to a vague task force still to be formed.
But that's beside the point. The point is there are officials and operatives in charge of the barangays, sitios, puroks, zones and neighborhoods. They're supposed to be responsible for policing and regulating activities in the community, including its streets and marketplaces. But instead of having them do their job, an artificial "task force" is asked to do it for them.
Meanwhile, the task force creators hold public hearings, grilling officials of national agencies who should be out in the markets and streets. Public hearings are great for media exposure and grandstanding, of course.
Meanwhile, hundreds or thousands of non-performing personnel already in place are sidelined, inutile to act on what could be a citywide problem.
There are police patrols neighborhood precincts, barangay chairmen and kagawads, sangguniang kabataan, barangay health and social workers, civilian volunteer organizations and tanods.
They're on the streets, in the slums, beside cockpits and karaoke bars, alongside markets and ukay-ukay alleys and sidewalks. They're supposed to be the frontline watchers of wheeler-dealer shenanigans, of smuggling and scams, of conspiracies or consumer crimes.
Intimately familiar with their surroundings, they can spot violations more surely than roving teams from elsewhere. But they're sidelined by a task force.
If it's a matter of searching and reporting on already identified candy and food products, even the tanod or the SK can do it. They don't have to be experts to do the job and they're right where the action is. Getting them all into the act will automatically mobilize a citywide network to check and watch out for contraband.
Not only that, it would facilitate the task of higher agencies like the BFAD and make law enforcement more efficient and more thorough since every nook and cranny of the city would be covered.
This business of having city hall do everything not only keeps this large network inactive for any contingency, it makes local officials and their operatives irresponsible. From the lay standpoint, this disregards common sense; from a management practitioner's view, it's inefficient and a waste of manpower already in place; and as public administration goes, it causes poor governance all around.
Good governance demands that every level of the bureaucracy performs its role from top down, bottom up, vertical and horizontal. That's the way to maximize efficiency, performance and results. But somehow the upper echelon manages to leave the bottom out of the picture, keeping government top-heavy and dysfunctional.
It's time barangays take their duties seriously and develop a sense of responsibility.
You want more on this? Confer with Mike Cagulada, Jun Chee Kee, Ed Maliza, or Alex Adeva of the Gising Barangay Movement! #
A former UN executive and vice chair of the local government academy, Manny writes Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays. Email: valdeman_esq@yahoo.com
