Letters from Davao: ‘Process’ By Jun Ledesma
(FRIDAY IN DAVAO City) Am in the midst of a melee at the Philippine Statistics Authority (formerly NSO). There are over 1,000 of us for now queuing in different windows. Am here to secure copies of birth certificates for my family. The PSA staff are doing their damn best to process everybody’s requests and they are quite efficient and courteous. As a senior citizen, I am accorded along with the rest of seniors and PWDs some special service of sort.
The Davao processing office recenrtly transferred to a bigger and spacious place, airconditioned, with adequate number of comfortable seats and television monitors to calm your nerves and hungry stomachs. The number of people that troop here to secure birth and marriage documents makes the job of PSA employees extremely challenging. (As I write this piece, the people which occupy the other half of the room roared as they root for their respective NBA teams. Now and then those watching the funny video clips would chorus in laughter. )
I just finished with the cashier and am told that I have to wait for an hour more to get the certificates that I came for. Which brings us to a related topic. President Duterte gave a marching order to all government agencies to expedite processing of documents and responding to inquiries and complaints. In this age of cyberspace and internet of things I wonder why we still have to queue and wait for hours to process and secure documents and car plates for several years! Now that we are about to have a national ID, then maybe among the perks for the NID holders is to enjoy shorter processing time.
I understand that the processing of documents had been franchised to a private firm. Maybe, PSA can authorised local government units to do that after all the data that are kept in its data bank come from the LGUs civil registry. Soon the National Broadband Network of the Department of Information will roll out internet access. Many remote LGUs will be connected to that communications backbone. This will unclog the horrendous crowd at the PSA regional offices.
There ought to be a way to ease traffic in government offices and in the highways. Just thinking and writing while waiting for my documents. Am not a basketball fan and I cannot laugh with a hungry stomach. (Jun Ledesma)
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