Raise fees but provide civilized service

Now it turns out the fees government agencies are supposed to collect from people who avail of their services are short of the target set by the Department of Finance. Data from the DOF show that collections of fees and charges by government agencies from January to May reached only P7.98 billion, very much less than the P11.195 billion target set for the first quarter alone. For the entire year, the target of P36.5 billion has been set from the collection of fees and charges.

Two things scream out: Maybe the DOF has set the target too high, just as Jojo Buñag said it did for BIR collections. Or maybe, the fees and charges are really too low, having been set years ago and have therefore failed to account for inflation through the years as well as other things affecting the cost of the government agency’s operations.

Ideally, government agencies should automatically increase fees and charges once expenses incurred in providing the service exceeds the fees collected. Problem is, Malacañang also issued an order preventing government agencies from raising fees without clearance from NEDA.

We can safely assume that neither the DOF nor NEDA has any idea which of the agencies is charging too little for their services. In other words, no one did any homework before setting the target collections that are supposed to be consistent with the goal of limiting the budget deficit for 2007 at P63 billion.

Now the DOF is saying the lower-than-expected collection of fees and charges was partly to blame for the failure to meet the budget deficit target for the first half. It is highly doubtful that government agencies turned in P11.995 billion in June alone just to meet the first half target of 19.975 billion.

Some of the biggest revenue contributors are: The Land Transportation Office, much of whose revenue is derived from the issuance of driver’s licenses and car registrations; the Department of Foreign Affairs, which collects fees from the issuance of passports; the National Bureau of Investigation, for the collection of fees from the issuance of clearances; the NSO, for the issuance of copies of civil registry documents.

There shouldn’t be too much outcry for raised fees if the government agencies involved are able to deliver the proper service. Last week, I got this e-mail from a citizen who said she “had the horrid experience of falling in line for her NBI clearance in a room full of about 200 people, no windows and 2.5 ton aircon out of order. It felt like being in an oven and I felt faint.”

I have written several times in this column about that long line of people seeking NBI clearance at a small NBI cubicle at the Megamall’s basement. The line goes all the way up the stairs to the top floor of the mall. At least Megamall is air conditioned and people can sit on the stairs. It is worse at the main office, as my reader wrote about.

As in the case of the DFA’s passport office, I presume most of the people lining up at NBI are jobseekers, potential OFWs, our modern day heroes. Tell me… is this any way to treat heroes? Would any one treat Jose Rizal in this manner?

Maybe, the reason the NBI and the DFA cannot give more civilized treatment for these people is because they don’t have the funds. Even if they did collect the right amount of fees and charges, the money goes straight to the National Treasury at DOF and the agencies have to live by what is allocated in their budgets. This is why raising fees and charges will not result in civilized service... only more money to plug the fiscal deficit.

Malacañang must devise a system that will give these frontline agencies a means by which they can civilize their service. Maybe they can retain part of the fees they collect or Congress can allocate budgets to buy more computers and hire more processors so people who need clearances and passports need not suffer the indignity they have to suffer now.

The US Embassy can perhaps be consulted on how they have managed to make their visa processing service what one might call, a profit center. Given the number of people who seek US visas, I can imagine that the service now more than pays for itself. But it is obvious from my experience, there was a lot of time and attention given on how to civilize the provision of the service, including the use of the Internet.

For instance, it should be easy enough for the NBI and the DFA to institute an Internet-based system for applying for a clearance or a passport. The form is completed and submitted on-line, payment is made to the agency’s account in a particular bank and the applicant given a specific appointment time and date for fingerprinting and additional information. The final clearance/ passport can be sent by courier to the applicant’s address. Or if this is too expensive, they can pick it up themselves on specific dates.

Then again, there are bureaucrats who do not want an improvement of the current barbaric system because they profit from it. It is no secret that fixers can make life easy for a fee. In one case, I remember an anecdote of an applicant who shelled out P500 and a few boxes of Jollibee fried chicken to avoid having to sweat it out. Maybe there is wisdom in having an express lane, like what they have at the DFA, and charge extra for civilized service. The extra fee is already being paid anyway, to fixers in cahoots with government agency bureaucrats.

My point simply is: before the number crunchers working from their ivory tower at the DOF start raising fees at government agencies to meet the fiscal deficit target, there must be a very visible effort to dramatically improve the service being given. Otherwise, there will be a lot of grumbling from people and heaven knows Ate Glue is in no position to sink even further in our people’s esteem.

Huli yan!!!

The Commission on Audit has reportedly ordered the immediate reimbursement of P1.13 million in representation allowances, which Postal Savings Bank directors had cashed out. COA described the expenses mostly on food and gasoline as “highly anomalous and illegal.”

Here are some examples of how the bank’s directors spent our money supposedly for Business Development Expenses according to a Business Mirror story.

• Consecutively numbered official receipts from one establishment were issued to a single person on different dates, a statistically improbable situation unless the establishment catered only to the postal official in question or, in the words of the auditors: “Unlikely that the same person is issued two consecutively numbered ORs on different dates. Seemingly, the restaurant had no other customer in between the two dates of the ORs issued.”

• Another official of the bank ate from one restaurant to another within a short interval—two lunches at the same time in different restaurants. “The same person is issued various receipts from different establishments during the same day. It is very surprising that the time indicated in the different ORs were very close to each other. It seems physically impossible for the same person to eat and go to the different establishments at almost the same time.”

• The COA also noted another case where the same transaction was reimbursed twice. “The hotel’s bill was used for reimbursement for the first month. On the following month, the hotel’s OR for the same transaction indicated in the bill already reimbursed in the previous month was again used for reimbursement.”

Stupid idiots! They can’t even steal from the public coffers in a competent manner. The BSP should disqualify them from being bank directors on the grounds of moral turpitude and incompetence. And some bigger idiot is proposing to invest a billion pesos of OFW funds in this bank!

Pinoy joke

Here’s another one from PhilStar reader Romana Borromeo.

TATAY: Bagsak ka na naman! Ba’t di mo gayahin si Pedro? Palaging may honor.

ANAK: Unfair naman kung ikumpara nyo ako kay Pedro.

TATAY: Bakit naman?

ANAK: Matalino tatay nun!

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]