Monday, October 26, 2008 Sun.Star Essay: What service? By Erma M. Cuizon
PUBLIC processing service is like any service, at least the way it looks. You’re told who to see as soon as you get anyone’s attention. So you go to the person referred to who turns to you as though she’s in a hurry about something else to do. When an office mate passes by her cubicle, she takes time to talk as though you were not there, and talk and, oh God!
But you do get what you want, like his signature in the papers you’re processing.
Then he gives the name of the person you’re supposed to see next. Off you go to that cubicle where the one serving smilingly receives the papers and puts them aside. Please come back for it next week, she says, then turns to the next in line.
A week after...
So, improve the processes, says President Gloria in a recent news item. The so-called “priority” government agencies, which include the Bureau of Internal Revenue, would use two percent of their budget for campaign against red tape.
The rest of the agencies should get money from the budget for maintenance, operation and overhead expenditures to improve services.
Something has to come out of the Anti-Red Tape Act of 2007 or else the way government is seen by citizens and the business sector is “prolonged processing” of documents, “tedious requirements,” too many signatures needed (why not the whole office force?), for that sense of power.
In this campaign, the Anti-Red Tape Task Force is headed by the Budget office and the Civil Service Commission.
In particular, the campaign against fixers and the filing of cases against those involved in all agencies has until March 31 next year to draw up. By December of the same year, the procedure per agency should already have been improved and set.
The news to “curb red tape” led me to interview people for any case of red-red- extra-red tape in government, in addition to what I already know, and I got a story from a friend.
Years ago, a Cebuana mother gave birth in Leyte to now an applicant for a nursing review. In the girl’s birth certificate, as filed by some clerk in the Leyte civil registry office, is the mother’s name correctly spelled but a few lines below this data in the same important paper is the name of the newly-born with the maternal name wrongly spelled by the clerk.
A clerk’s mistake in 1987, misspelling a baby’s maternal name, haunts this family up to now, or since almost a quarter of a century ago.
Thus, the now-grown-up daughter applied in the Cebu City registry office on December 18, 2007 for “correction of clerical error in a name” so she could take the board exams.
Over two months after, the girl received from the Leyte registry a receipt of her request for name correction.
Another two months after (or five months after the application), the correction was granted, or the girl was told. But she had to “chase” the actual paper.
Another month and thrice after, a “finality of said petition” for correction was mailed to the registry central office in Manila.
The girl’s mother called up the Leyte and Manila offices, dogged the steps of registrants in the Cebu office to look for that magic certificate as corrected.
This was in between the danger of body collapse of the girl and her mother.
More months after, Manila in a long distance hotline call which the mother initiated said the certificate was mailed to Cebu City almost a month ago, but where is it? The mother rushed to the Post Office, the mail wasn’t there. It isn’t in Leyte; it’s surely in the ether somewhere 25 days after it was mailed (if it ever was mailed) from Manila in an attempt by government to post, alas! better than slowwwwly.
The time to collapse from the exhausting, exhaustive process is at this point.
