THE ESSENTIAL THING

Government pensioners & other random thoughts

Ma Merceditas N Gutierrez, Ombudsman

Today I write about a mix bag of thoughts.  You may call them concerns, with varying degrees of urgency.  I want my mind discharged of them, share them with you, so you can also think about them, and perhaps now or in the future make your own statement for the enlightenment of all. 

Government pensioners.  Some lawyers and other professionals doing private practice before certain government offices are former officials who have retired from said offices, and are now receiving government pension.  The pension can be seen, typically modest as it, as a way for government to express its gratitude to the retired official for past work given to it. But these retired officials now do the work of representing private clients who are pitted against the very offices where they came from and actively perform work directly against the government!

For example, some BIR retirees may now represent private clients who cheat government off the correct taxes due from them or their businesses. These retirees make full use of their contacts inside BIR, such as former colleagues and former staff.  They zip through offices where normally the general public have little or no access.  Similarly, former Ombudsman officials, who now receive pension from government, may now represent clients who are charged with wrongdoing, as against the very office which used to employ them to help pin down wrongdoers.  They too use past connections to the full. 

I should l think this kind of practice is wrong or at the very least is unethical. It may be the right of everybody to do the kind of work he or she thinks is proper, but not if you choose to fight the very government which is giving you a pension and where connections gained in the past are almost always improperly used. Our legislators may want to craft a law concerning this practice in order to prohibit or at least restrict it.  Our Supreme Court may also want to add its bit towards a more appropriate professional conduct for practicing lawyers.

Congressional oversight.   Speaking of legislators, one powerful tool they have in their official arsenal is congressional oversight.  This tool, correctly and creatively used, can conceivably do wonders for our people and our country.  It can be used by our legislators to make a periodic review of our laws.  Yes, the very laws they enact, to see if they are working properly, are being enforced as they should, are still relevant and if they are in fact bringing about the benefits they were meant to bring about as shown among others by their past deliberations.

Our legislators may set aside some time to precisely do this.  To help them, they may form a committee and hire expert consultants to do the work, and they can just act on the recommendations of said committee.  Such work will eventually ferret out laws that are impractical, too idealistic, archaic on the whole, irrelevant, and worse have been subject to abuse, such that instead of giving added benefit to our people, have been the source of hardship and alienation between government and citizens.  It will not only make our legal system in step with the times but one positioned for the future.

Back to basics for the government procurement law.  The law on government procurement, RA 9184, was meant to reform the then cluttered system of government procurement and simplify it.  But I have the feeling, just from looking at the amount of paperwork the Government Procurement Policy Board (GPPB) has done to implement the law, that the same has become as complex as the system it was meant to supplant and modernize. Has bureaucratic complexity again set in were it is not supposed to be, or are our government agencies, including LGUs, simply not taught yet on how to use the law properly in order to secure their requirements in as smooth and fast manner as they like? 

Consistent with the observation above, the procurement law is one area which our Congress may want to revisit to find out if it is working or has been implemented properly, and make the necessary changes where deficiencies or impracticalities might have been found.

Input from the public on how to improve government efficiency.  One of our mandates as a Constitutional body is to look at government inefficiency wherever it is found and make proposals for its eradication.  The general public can help us meet this task by giving us their thoughts on the matter.  We welcome your inputs all the time.  They make us one with you in the dream to make of our country a progressively better place to live in – not just for us but for our children and their children.  Please visit our website and tell me about it. £

Originally published in the March 4-5, 2010 issue of Business Mirror.