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Saturday, September 25, 2004
Traders on dealing with City Hall: ordeal
BUSINESSMEN in Cebu City bombarded employees of the Cebu City Hall with complaints, saying the services they rendered the taxpayers were unsatisfactory and accusing them of conduct unbecoming of public servants.
During a consultation with the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) Policy Center at the Holiday Plaza Hotel last Thursday, businessmen agreed that employees of the City Hall must be taught the proper values and attitudes in dealing with the taxpayers.
“(High) tax is not an issue if the government will deliver the services needed and expected from them efficiently, properly and promptly,” Wellmade Motors and Development Corp. president and chief executive officer Philip Tan said.
“City Hall should take care of the taxpayers because we are the ones giving them money. Just like us (businessmen), we take care of our clients because they are the ones giving us business.
We complain regarding their (City Hall employees) services, they don’t listen,” said Cebu Filipino-Chinese Chamber of Commerce president Filomeno Lim.
He suggested that City Hall computerize the process of securing business permits and payment of business taxes to be more efficient and transparent in its services.
Ordeal
A representative of the Cebu Realtors Board narrated her ordeal in City Hall wherein two employees laughed at her when she asked if it was possible to hasten the processing of her business papers.
“They laughed at me and commented, ‘Unsa? Airplane ticket (it’s not an airplane ticket)? Is it proper to laugh at your clients?” she asked.
A representative from the Cebu Bakeshop Association revealed that most of the members of the industry have to give gifts—in cash or kind—to City Hall employees to get their business permits or other business processes done in one day.
“We don’t want to give, but we have to because we need our business permits to operate,” he said.
It takes two to three weeks before a company is able to secure a business permit from City Hall to operate in the city.
Small and Medium Enterprise Development for Sustainable Employment Program (Smedsep) program manager Martina Vahlhaus earlier said the process of securing business permits in major cities in Asia takes only three to five days.
“More than that is already very long,” she said.
Not deserving
The businessmen were one in saying that Cebu City did not deserve the 6.21 rating it got in one of the indicators—the city’s regulatory environment such as licensing procedures and fees, taxes and other regulatory requirements—of a responsive local government unit.
The rating was a result of the Philippine Cities Competitiveness Ranking Project 2003 (PCCRP) conducted by the AIM-Policy Center, in collaboration with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, The Asia Foundation, German Development Cooperation and the International Labor Organization.
Overall, Cebu City ranked fifth most competitive city among the 12 metro cities in the Philippines based on selected indicators.
The Smedsep, through AIM, is now conducting consultations with the metropolitan cities in Cebu to verify the results of the PCCRP.
Smedsep is a program funded by the Federal Republic of Germany, which has allocated four to five million euros to establish favorable business conditions in the Visayas regions for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises.
The eight-year program is jointly implemented by GTZ, Department of Trade and Industry, and Technical Education and Skills Development Authority. (JBN)
(September 25, 2004 issue)
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