by Aurelio A. Peña
IT’S so nice to hear from people who also share our frustrations in our column last month on “Doing business with government”. It was even “timely” as Ms Risteta Dumagan Roldan, a lawyer from Digos, was on her way to city hall to follow up collection of an overdued bill for shirt and uniforms her small outfit supplied to the city government.
Sharing similar experiences like this has a way of waking people up to these problems and eventually find solutions to them.
It wasn’t clear how long she had been trying to follow up her payment. But between me and Roldan, she deserved to be paid sooner. She is an ACCREDITED supplier, a member of PHILGEPS (whatever that means) and better qualified to bid for projects in the city government. She runs a “:micro-enterprise” and has a business permit and license to operate a legitimate business. In other words, she has all the legal qualifications to do business with the government.
We’re wondering if city hall accounting is aware that small businesses doing business with the government need to generate a regular monthly cash flow coming from paid bills. If there’s no cash flow, there’s no money to pay for workers’ wages.
And if workers don’t get their wages, there’s no food on the table for the poor Filipino family. If there’s no money collected, the small supplier can’t pay her taxes to the city government. It’s as simple as that. All these things are linked together.
In her email to this column, Ms Roldan wrote that she brought a copy of Edge Davao and showed my Trading Post column to CTO employees who all agreed with what was written, but were resigned to what they’re going thru— too much delay in the processing of vouchers.
Following up the payment for several months, she admitted :
”Nahilis na lang and ligid sa akong lowly FX sa sige balik balik ug sige ko kahutdan ug load sa sige tawag” She said they kept assuring her that “dali ra daw ma process” (it’s easy to process the payment) . Now, she said, they no longer reply to her text messages or take her “pestering” calls.
Now, she has second thoughts about participating in future biddings by the city government. “I don’t know if I have to participate in future biddings with these unfortunate experiences I’m suffering”, she wrote.
One can see they’re very scared of the Commission on Audit (COA) and have to follow official “systems and procedures” to the letter. This is the “check and balance” set in place to prevent graft and corruption in the government. One city hall staff admitted “Mao gyud ni ang bureaucracy. Palohon nato ang proceso. Wala tay mahimo:” (This is the bureacracy. There is nothing we can do.)
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