Strangled by red tape

About a decade after the Commission on Elections (Comelec) took my biometrics, I finally received my voter’s identification card by mail at home last week.

I hesitate to call the ID a card. It’s two sheets of plastic enclosing the information paper, which is still part of a regular size sheet of paper that’s fraying where it’s been folded. It looks like it’s been folded and in storage for a long time – it’s nearly as frayed as the slip of yellowed paper that has served as my voter’s ID for about two decades. I’m having this old one framed as a museum piece.

You have to cut the new one yourself to make it look like a card. The plastic is so flimsy it looks like it will wilt in the heat of a jeepney ride, so you might want to have it laminated.

You wonder how much was shaven from the cost by not cutting and laminating the ID. And you wonder whether the amount meant savings for the government, or merely went to private bank accounts. And if it was a kickback, under whose watch at the Comelec was the money given?

For sure it wasn’t under Andy Bautista, who’s still waiting for his confirmation by the Commission on Appointments as Comelec chairman. At least under his watch, I finally got my voter’s ID.

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I wonder if it will also take a decade before driver’s license cards, vehicle license plates and registration stickers become available. It’s giving a new dimension to red tape. Not only do people have to wait in line for at least two hours to apply for those items; now people have to keep going back to the Land Transportation Office (LTO), waste time queuing in the heat and pollution of open waiting areas, only to be told to come back again because the items still aren’t available.

This is retrogression and the worst performance ever for the LTO, which had received ISO certification during the Arroyo administration when driver’s license processing took less than half an hour.

The next batch of officials in 2016 must get serious about cutting red tape in both national and local offices.

Red tape is designed for corruption. It is one of the biggest disincentives to the kind of investments that generate meaningful jobs.

Many employers have told me that red tape is also one of the biggest reasons for failure to comply with requirements for wider coverage of Pag-IBIG, PhilHealth and the Social Security System, and also for kasambahay registration.

Red tape kills the spirit of enterprise. Budding entrepreneurs surrender from the mountain of red tape, with fees collected at every step by national and local government offices all the way down to the barangay, for setting up even a small operation.

Those who survive the requirements for starting a business – including submitting numerous expensive blueprint copies of even the smallest store or office construction plans – have to run the gauntlet just to get permits for employees and even the annual fire safety certificate. This is the reason many businesses still have no such fire clearances even way past the middle of the year.

This was the reason the late Jesse Robredo, when he was secretary of the interior and local governments, released a circular allowing city hall to issue business permits ahead of the fire inspection. The circular was part of a joint administrative order with the Department of Trade and Industry, which was meant to facilitate business operations.

Valenzuela City officials have invoked Robredo’s order in explaining the lack of a fire certificate for Kentex Manufacturing Corp., the slipper factory that was gutted by fire last May, killing 74 people, mostly workers.

The city is considered one of the most investment-friendly in the country. The joint administrative order should have been accompanied by an intensified effort to improve the performance of fire safety agencies, since their poor service was the reason the order was issued.

As the Kentex inferno showed, red tape can also kill. Daang matuwid should have given priority to streamlining procedures for all types of government services. But the work can be tedious and doesn’t grab headlines or produce catchy sound bites.

We’ll just have to wait for new teams in both national and local offices to come in, and hope some of them will do their homework.

Who knows, the LTO might even get back its ISO certification, and we will have better voter’s ID cards.

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BORROWED GLORY: Jesse Robredo was one of the guys who didn’t mind tedious work and tried to cut red tape. It’s funny how daang matuwid is lionizing him now, three years after his death in a plane crash.

It was no secret that President Aquino and his shooting buddy Rico Puno marginalized Robredo during his Cabinet stint. Puno was the undersecretary for the interior in charge of the Philippine National Police until he became embroiled in a corruption scandal involving a PNP gun deal. He was with P-Noy and then Manila mayor Alfredo Lim during the hostage fiasco in Rizal Park that left eight of 22 Hong Kong tourists dead in a bus on Aug. 23, 2010.

P-Noy openly admitted differences with Robredo, who kept his head down and worked quietly, wearing tsinelas regularly not as a political campaign gimmick but because he was really more comfortable using the poor man’s footwear instead of expensive leather shoes.

When Robredo died and there was a public outpouring of grief and regret over his unsung dedication to public service, daang matuwid shifted gears and extolled him, in the same way that it belatedly did after seeing the massive outpouring of public sympathy for the 44 police Special Action Force commandos slaughtered in Mamasapano, Maguindanao.

After the gun scandal, which was followed by a mysterious raid on Robredo’s office by Puno’s men, P-Noy would let go of Puno with as much reluctance as he showed over his favorite cop Alan Purisima.

Robredo deserves to be remembered on his death anniversary tomorrow and emulated as an exemplary public servant. Too bad the good are the first to leave us. Certain individuals are now trying to bask in borrowed glory, but Robredo’s accomplishments are non-transferable.