| |
During a month-long vacation in Zambales in May 2000, I
helped my mother straighten out some real estate official documents at the
local office of the Community Environmental and Natural Resources Office (CENRO)
in Inhobol, Masinloc, and at the Kapitolyong Panlalawigan in Iba. My
experiences during the several times that my Mom and I visited these
offices left me with a feeling of pleasant contradictions. To generalize
and say that the Philippine bureaucracy in the 21st century is antiquated
is perhaps a bit harsh; however, the provincial offices that we came in
contact with did show enough signs of obsolescence in terms of management,
methodologies, and equipment.
In
terms of technology, the government offices I saw in the year 2000 were a
bureaucracy stuck in time, a hark back perhaps to the administration of
William Howard Taft. There were no computers to speak of. Was it in the
Inhobol office of CENRO that I spotted an Underwood manual typewriter?
That, definitely was vintage Taft. I saw no telephones in use, but saw an
abundance of pancit and suman vendors coming and going, selling snacks and
socializing with the workers during duty hours. As a consequence, the
offices smelled of pancit palabok. I wouldn’t call it a circus - that
would be too demeaning and misleading. I was reminded instead of a country
flea market or garage sales abuzz with suburban Moms on a bright Saturday
morning.
As
we sat inside the hot and humid office in Iba waiting for our names to be
called, I found myself in an excellent vantage point from where to observe
the nuances of an office culture that I have only speculated about.
Steeped in paperless procedures and operational methods of a highly
automated big government, I was astonished to discover that land records
were kept in thick bound folders stacked almost ceiling-high atop filing
cabinets. Time after time, a clerk would pull out these heavy volumes to
consult, cross-check, or verify a record. I sat there thinking the
unthinkable: if this building with all its paper records were to be gutted
by fire, it would be a catastrophic loss for the peasant landowner, unless
the original records were stored in a computer somewhere or in redundant
files maintained in microfiche or microfilm. The records in Masinloc were
worse – pages were dog-eared and yellowed with age.
I
found the general atmosphere of the offices lackadaisical, perhaps because
of the oppressive heat and lack of air-conditioning, or perhaps because
employees were paid a pittance. Female employees filed their nails while
looking at what I thought to be a Mary Kay cosmetics catalog. The men,
dressed in their blue "Gusot Mayaman" uniforms, return to their
desks, perhaps after a long lunch capped with the obligatory siesta.
Seated at their desks now, they assume an air of authority while flipping
through index cards over and over as if searching for something. The
processing of paper work was painfully slow, and was hand-carried from
desk to desk. If you were closely observing the round-robin, you’d know
that your name is about to be called when the paper trail reaches the end
of its destination at the supervisor’s desk. She glances at you as if to
size you up before she affixes the provincial seal and her signature on
the document. She is easily recognized: her desk faces the rest as if in a
classroom; her hairdo and make-up, despite the humidity, flawless.
"Mr. Reyes, dito na po kayo."
[top]
It
took us half a day, moving from office to office and from station to
station to complete processing a single real estate record. It was
frustrating to say the least; however, the experience was for me a taste
of a slice of Filipiniana that I would remember with amusement and
fondness.
I
never doubted the Filipino bureaucrat’s dedication to duty, and there
never was any question in my mind that he could be just as efficient as
his American counterpart were he given the proper tools to work with and
were he appropriately compensated. He is polite but to a point;
unfortunately, he is inflexible. Like in the Spanish educational system
based on rote that all but wiped out the indio pupil’s capacity to
reason and think independently, gray areas in modern decision-making
processes do not exist in the mind of the rank and file Filipino
bureaucrat. For all his shortcomings, however, it is his unique attitude
and demeanor that I found fascinating.
It
was almost four o’clock in the afternoon when we were handed the
executed Deed of Trust, roughly five hours after we arrived at the
Kapitolyong Panlalawigan. Stepping outside, I felt the burning heat of the
afternoon sun and noticed the complete absence of shade trees in the wide
open space in front of the stately edifice with the Corinthian columns. I
wanted to go back inside to discuss with someone about the wisdom of
planting trees around the building for reasons beyond aesthetics, but that
would have been presumptuous of me. Besides, my Mother was waiting for me
in the car.
It
would be another fifteen minutes before we got back home to Salaza.
John
Reyes
Top of Page
Home
Doon po sa Amin
© Copyright 2002-2006 ZambalesForum (ZF) discussion
group members. All rights reserved. Disclaimers
|
|
