Cut redundant requisites in gov’t transactions

Another year has passed. Yet it was, to many in the bureaucracy, another wasted year in terms of learning simple lessons in management.

I find this out when I start gathering the 10 police requisites in applying for a license for my small-bore 22 cal. Squibman. Well, it isn’t really just 10 requisites. A police clearance requires a barangay clearance that requires a purok leader’s endorsement. Those are two additional documents that cost P100. Court clearances require a prosecutor’s clearance for each, which in turn requires a CTC (community tax certificate). That’s three more documents that cost more money.

The huge crowd at the Quezon City Treasurer’s office waiting to pay fees and taxes amazes me. It’s unimaginable to see citizens, including seniors, obliging to shell out cash to City Hall on the first working day of the new year. The scene is like what is normally seen at every Bureau of Internal Revenue collection office on the last day of filing income taxreturns.

While I queue for a CTC, the guy behind me, complaining, whispers that the size of the crowd is a repeat of last year’s. Only a handful of clerks are around to issue CTCs to six or seven lines of applicants. One clerk is assigned to the senior citizens’ line, which does not seem to ever shorten because as the minutes pass, more seniors keep coming.

I wonder why the City Hall honchos have not learned from last year’s experience that deploying more clerks would hasten transactions and quickly clear the crowd. Apparently, they have not heard that the heavy traffic at the Balintawak and Bocaue toll gates on the NLEx was eased by adding more toll booths. Or they think that hiring more clerks means more expenses and, therefore, less revenues. But aren’t revenues collected to cover expenses for government services? Take the case of seniors paying P5 for a CTC. The amount is not enough for the return of the cost of labor and supplies spent for each CTC. And to think that CTCs are hardly honored in government transactions.

After sweating even on a cool morning and shelling out P5 for a CTC, I proceed to Room 404 of the Hall of Justice to apply for a prosecutor’s clearance. A payment order is given to me with instruction to return four hours later. For some reason I returned only on the following day. After I present the official receipt (OR) for the prosecutor’s clearance fee, I am told to wait outside Room 404. Lo, in the list of steps for processing clearance, the sixth (and the last) step says in effect that the processing of the clearance application starts after the presentation of the OR. Meaning I have to wait for an hour before the clearance is released. Why can’t processing start upon receipt of the application?

Obtaining a police clearance is another life drama.

Looking at the bigger picture, if only we have a central data bank from where the personal information of individual citizens can be retrieved with ease, those long queues and redundant procedures can be eliminated. For instance, an official birth certificate, which is a common requirement for the issuance of a firearm license, passport, voter’s ID, etc. should be applied for only once.

A national ID system can be a tool for eliminating these redundancies. Of course, much revenue for the government would be reduced. But then the citizens’ index for happiness would soar.

Rolando G. Valenzuela, 78, is a retired government employee.