While conversing with Cebuano businessman and suspected drug lord Peter Lim, President Rodrigo Duterte also took the time to give an impromptu televised lecture on efficiency in government service by reminding all government employees to cut down on their breaks and work well for the duration of their eight-hour workday.
He emphasized this by reiterating that government employees who extend their lunch breaks by more than an hour and check out an hour before the end of their workday are guilty of swindling the public.
Duterte’s words ring true at a time when Metro Cebu officials like Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña and Mandaue City Mayor Luigi Quisumbing are saddled with age-old bureaucracy that makes their clientele, the transacting public, wait on them instead of the other way around.
By now we were familiar with the news story that circulated in social media about two job order employees that were ordered relieved by Quisumbing after a photo of them playing DOTA (Defense of the Ancients) appeared on Facebook.
No such incident has yet occurred under the Osmeña administration, but the mayor already announced plans of creating a Department of Fixers that would fast-track transactions with the public.
The mayor’s pronouncement may have raised eyebrows and caused department heads and employees to howl in protest, but if that’s what it takes to get them to serve the public better, then so be it.
As we pointed out in a previous editorial, Osmeña’s proposal is a telling indictment on the gross inefficiency of government bureaucracy, a labyrinthine maze of offices that the transacting public is forced to navigate at their own risk and inconvenience.
The President has ordered all departments and government agencies to cut down on red tape and make themselves more transparent and accessible to the public.
One such step to cutting down red tape is a proposal by Sen. Ralph Recto to extend the validity of passports by a decade similar to the travel visa granted to Filipinos traveling to the US.
Following the President’s declaration, the Civil Service Commission and Congress can perhaps match it with laws and regulations that impose regulations and stiffer sanctions on errant government employees fond of extending their lunch breaks before doing any real work and service to the taxpayers that pay their salaries.
If that were the case, then maybe there won’t be a need for a Department of Fixers who do more to facilitate speedier transactions for the public. We hope Duterte’s reminder doesn’t fall on deaf ears and it would help if government officials lead the way in imposing discipline not only on themselves but also on their subordinates.