By Atty. Antonio P. Pekas
It was reported that the President walked out of a cabinet meeting in exasperation due to the failure of officials to solve the ever present red tape in all branches of government.
It takes forever to get anything done in this country and all parts of government are increasing all the useless requirements which are the sources of red tape. For instance, if you are doing business in Baguio City, there are more requirements now before you can get your business permit. All employees now have to get work permits which in turn requires going through medical tests. Not only is it expensive for the workers, it is time consuming. This is aside from the increased fees that you have to pay.
I don’t have much beef against increased fees as government has to run and that means more fund to keep its wheels turning. But medical check-ups for ordinary businesses that are not health sensitive? That would be understandable for those in the food business or for masseurs. The people responsible for imposing the new requirements are not sensitive to the fact that everybody has been fed up with red tape, with a lot of government requirements before anything can get moving. Surely, this will have an effect this coming elections. People generally do not vote for people who are making their lives miserable. So many incumbents might suffer, or might have a lot lesser votes now.
Another example on how our government is uselessly making our lives difficult is the familiar court processes for change of name or to correct entries in a birth certificate. We have to go to court to get these done. In the US, they don’t even need a lawyer, saving their citizens a lot of money, time and effort.
Their divorce process also just involves checking some of those tiny boxes on ready-made forms. In this country, a person of ordinary means might have to sell all his inheritance in order to finance the difficult court process to have his marriage annulled.
Even the simplest thing like an affidavit has to be brought to a lawyer for it to be accomplished and notarized. Such can be expensive especially if the time wasted is computed. How about in other countries? I have seen an affidavit in an Australian divorce proceeding where the affidavits were just entitled as such—AFFIDAVIT. They were not even notarized. In that situation anybody can just narrate the required facts in writingand then title it AFFIDAVIT. And the work is done. How easy or convenient.
How to lick red tape? The only way is for government offices to periodically meet like once a week and go through all their processed involving the public with a fine toothed comb and try to weed out the unnecessary or those that can be done away with. Am sure there are many requirements that should not be there for being useless or redundant.
Am sure also that there are many requirements that appear important but people can easily get by bribing those issuing it. It used to be that the fire department needs a lot of things before they can give their go signal to your application for a business permit. But then they can relax the processes if you buy the required fire extinguishers from a favored supplier which might be partially owned by the chief or his mistress or his friend.
Yes, so many requirements in government processes can be done away with. The sad thing is there is not much effort to spot these and indeed remove them to lessen the burden on us ordinary citizens.
Another concern where PDu30 should be exasperated about is the failure of Congress to pass a freedom of information law and one to protect a whistle blower as well as provide incentives for ratting on corrupt officials. While he issued an executive order which temporarily assures freedom of information, this should be strengthened by the passage of a law by Congress.
Because an executive order might die if the chief executive dies.
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