Saturday, March 21, 2009 [ sunstar.com.ph ]
VARIOUS departments of the Provincial Capitol are being challenged to improve the quality of their services to the public by coming up with a Citizen’s Charter they can display and be held accountable for.
Representatives of 16 Provincial Capitol departments took part in a three-day training, which ended yesterday, that discussed the Anti-Red Tape Act of 2007, including how to draft the Citizen’s Charter.
The charter, said Louiesella Lacino of the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG), is “a service standard that communicates information on the services provided by the concerned government agencies to the public” and describes “step-by-step procedures to avail of a particular service.”
Section 6 of Republic Act 9485 defines the charter as “information billboards that should be posted at the main entrance of offices or at the most conspicuous places.”
During yesterday’s leg of the training, each Capitol department was asked to present a flowchart or list of steps an individual has to follow when transacting with them.
The presentations included something as simple as getting an employment letter of recommendation from the Office of the Vice Governor, to how a local government unit representative can follow up a request for Provincial Government funding of a waterworks project.
“With the skills they learned in making the chart, they can go back to their departments and identify all key frontline services that they can make a charter for,” said lawyer Rosemarie Arnado of the Office of the Provincial Attorney.
Arnado said the Capitol seeks to be compliant with the Anti-Red Tape Act.
At the provincial level, they have dubbed their compliance efforts as the Government Work ENhanced (Gwen) project, in honor of Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia.
The Anti-Red Tape Act seeks to penalize a government employee who, among other things, refuses to accept an application or request from the transacting public within the prescribed period.
It also seeks to sanction a government worker who fails to act on the application or, in case something was wrong with the application to begin with, fails to inform the client of what was wrong.
The law also penalizes government workers who fail to attend to clients who are still within the premises of the office or agency prior to the end of the official workday or during lunch.
The penalties range from light (30-day suspension without pay and mandatory attendance in a values orientation program) to medium (90-day suspension) and heavy (dismissal from service and perpetual disqualification from government work). (KNR)
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