Frontliners

LETTERS FROM THE AGNO

March Fianza

In the Philippines, government agencies hire security guards who double as frontline clerks who frisk, ask questions and try to solve problems of clients. In some cases, the frontliner “clerk” in blue uniform acts like he is the “know it all” manager who can save the day for the client.

Later when the customer is able to talk to the real person in charge, he finds out that his time and effort was just wasted by that guy in blue. In other cases, frontline workers mix-up the issue presented to them and that becomes additional problems to a client.

The other frontliner sits at the first table of an office and serves as the clerk who receives and records all incoming communication letters, memos and delivered documents from other offices, and piles the same in a corner of the desk. The 8am to 5pm employee will not care about the importance and urgency of the communication letters and documents he receives and so he just piles them one on top of another paper that came in first.

The desk clerk then carries the heap of documents from his table and places them on the table of the boss who ran out of papers to sign or things to do. And so, as it has been said in the Good Book, “the first shall be last, the last shall be first.” Those who came early to have their papers processed will have to go home late because the front desk guy does not know how to make himself an effective public servant.

It is not easy to be regional executive director of the most important line government agency in the country because you will always be on the RED. There are nitty-gritty unwritten requirements that have to be looked into. In the Cordillera, the new RED of the DENR should consider reshuffling his staff.

With “OIC Gov. Roger Sinot of the Autonomous Republic of Asin,” I visited DENR OIC RED Paquito Moreno to follow up some papers last week. RED “Kits” was his usual friendly and good-humored self. In a very light and informal atmosphere, we talked a little about the vacancies and new positions in the DENR bureaucracy that would soon be in place once the budget for the government items are finalized and released.

But for the moment, there will be no movements, no re-appointments and new appointments, meaning every DENR guy will still hold on to his post until further instructions. As for job applications, RED Kits said, in the meantime he discourages such because the application papers might just gather dust in his office considering that the fund notices for the items are not yet ready.

I was not sure if the OIC RED was serious when he asked me if I was interested in a position in the DENR. But of course the only answer I can tell him in jest was that I could have wanted to apply for the position of RED – if he was not appointed to the position vacated by RED Clarence Baguilat.

During that short exchange, I wanted to tell him a bit of unsolicited advice that I forgot to do. I wanted to tell him to put a staff in his office who should be able to feel and connect with the needs of the agency’s clients. It is not a matter of complying with a job description and finishing an 8am to 5am work, rather it is a matter of satisfying people who need the services of the DENR.

The RED’s office needs a government worker who knows how to interact intelligently with different kinds of people and who is familiar with the Cordilleran who possesses a distinct character depending on what province he comes from.

In other government agency offices, the presence of the “cordon sanitaire” that screens people is obvious. They ask questions from a client and try to interpret it; even try to provide an answer and a solution, especially when the concerned official is not around. But what happens is that the main issue gets garbled as it passes from mouth to mouth, thus the official gets the wrong message. In cases like these, the incompetent office staff can make or unmake a RED.

Incidentally, in one blind item that came out in a local weekly about the continuous use by a DENR official of a government vehicle when he has already “retired,” RED Moreno was quick to clarify that RED Baguilat, if he was the person being alluded to, has not been fully retired and separated from office as he was given special assignments in the interest of public service. RED Baguilat has not even received his retirement money. I suspect an insider in the department has an axe to grind against whoever the blind item was alluding to.     

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How come everytime the city sends its frontliners to hold public meetings in its bid to bring its waste to its neighboring communities, they convince the people by telling them that the municipality and host-community will benefit financially and there will be employment for the jobless.

When it comes to proper waste disposal, employment and money should not be the priorities to be peddled. In past public consultations I have seen, especially on basura concerns, the proponents avoid talking about health and sanitation and the effects the project brings to the community because questions from the public that are often left unanswered will surely flood the meetings.

In one consultation in Yagyagan, Tadiangan, Tuba where an ESL project was proposed, an elderly citizen gave the observation that most statements made about the proposed basuraproject were all good, clean, healthy and would have very minimal negative effects to the community. If so, then why not put the basura in the middle of Burnham Park and why then does the city have to deposit its basura in a neighbouring town?

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The NCIP field offices are the frontliners in the mandate to correct the injustices inflicted on IPs as far back as can be remembered. But when a few personnel do things contrary to what should be done, the injustice is not cured but instead, repeated. I was told that some field offices have contradicting interpretations on the terms ancestral “land” and “domain,” and for other reasons. Because of all these, a moratorium was issued by the NCIP that further delayed the processing of applications.

Ancestral land applicants who have waited for the longest time for the approval of their claims are dying one after the other. Why should they suffer more for problems unresolved by frontline offices? If the moratorium stays for a long time, a greater number of IPs would unreasonably be experiencing agony for the mistakes committed by a few office personnel. In the meantime, fearless squatters in droves enter the idle and open ancestral lands of the meek Ibaloy. – ozram.666@yahoo.com