Waiting in line

Government identification cards are being replaced with new versions that contain security chips. The way each agency is going about it should give President Duterte an idea of which ones are efficient and which are drowning in red tape.

For efficiency, pensioners are hailing the Government Service Insurance System. The GSIS has been texting its member-retirees to replace their ATM cards with new ones that contain hack-resistant security chips, with services available on weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

A pensioner can show up at any GSIS office, present the old ATM card, sign for the new one and have one’s thumbprint and photo taken. Everything is done in five minutes.

Members of the GSIS, Social Security System, PhilHealth and PagIBIG are getting a Unified Multi-purpose ID card or UMID with an EMV (Europay, Mastercard, Visa) chip. The EMV, touted as the global standard for chip-based debit and credit card transactions, allows the card to be used abroad. Union Bank is the partner bank.

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In contrast, President Duterte can check out the long lines at the Land Bank of the Philippines at Camp Crame, headquarters of an organization close to his heart, the Philippine National Police.

The Landbank ATM card is also being replaced for the same reason as that of the GSIS. Unlike with the GSIS, police cardholders learn about the need to replace their cards not through helpful text messages, but only when they need to use the cards.

For PNP members both active and retired, there is only one place in the entire country where they can change the card: the Landbank branch at Camp Crame. So even cops from Tawi-Tawi, including aging retirees on wheelchairs, must personally travel to Quezon City to replace their cards.

They cannot just turn in the old card; they must wait in line to get an application form about five to six pages long that they must fill out, back to back, with the print so small they need a magnifying glass.

The Landbank office can accommodate only about 50 applicants, so people must wait in long lines outside, wheelchairs and all – in the blistering heat this summer. Maybe hollow blocks will be installed outside to elevate the waiting area in case of flooding during the monsoon season.

The long application form is supposedly to update one’s record. I can understand that the PNP and Armed Forces have suffered from fake claimants in the past, with the pensions of members long dead still being collected.

But the PNP already has its members’ biometrics on file. And each cardholder must show up in person to get the new card, so the pensioner can’t possibly be dead and someone else is scamming the PNP. Why the need for an application form a kilometer long?

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Red tape is often designed into systems so people are forced to pay “facilitation fees” to crooks. We’re celebrating the ongoing purge of such lowlifes in government.

In certain cases, however, red tape is due simply to plain incompetence and laziness – an inability to improve systems and procedures.

With all the technology now available, it should be so much easier to simplify transactions without sacrificing the integrity of the system, without requiring people to fly all the way from Sarangani to Manila just to update ID information. President Duterte, a septuagenarian, surely understands what a hassle this can be particularly to senior citizens and those requiring a wheelchair.

Duterte has ordered all transactions for simple public documents in frontline agencies to be completed within 15 days. This is contained in Memorandum Circular No. 44 signed on his behalf by Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea last May 4. Duterte had said at the start of his presidency that he wanted such transactions finished within three days, with his home city of Davao as the model.

I’ve been waiting for my driver’s license card for a year and a half. I was impressed by the eight-minute processing for my renewal application, at the end of which I got my five-year provisional license. They made me write down my contact number and promised to call once the ID card is ready. That was on Nov. 26, 2016. I’ve resisted going back to the Land Transportation Office branch; I want to find out if they will actually call me. My wait might take eight years. And this is at the LTO at the Alabang Town Center in Muntinlupa, near the home village of Arthur Tugade. Last year the LTO crowed that he got his license card in 10 minutes – but he’s the secretary of transportation.

The provisional license will do in case I get pulled over for a traffic violation, but it’s not accepted in other transactions such as buying plane tickets and certain banking activities.

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Red tape is one of the biggest disincentives to investments and one of the top deterrents to the development of entrepreneurship in this country.

Whether the red tape is encountered at city hall or in national government agencies, blame usually ends up heaped on Duterte himself, since he keeps mentioning it in his speeches.

For example, the Commission on Elections has just announced that public school teachers who suffered injury, and relatives of any teacher who died while on poll duty during the recent barangay and youth council elections will receive compensation within 30 days.

It will take longer if there are questions about the claims, according to the poll body. Even if that’s 30 working days, or about a month and a half of processing time, that’s still the blink of an eye in our bureaucracy – if it can be followed.

There lies the problem. Something always gets lost in translating a presidential order into action.