Stop corruption? Reform the COA and the CSC

Thirty-one years and a day after Martial Law, it is indeed distressing news to hear that corruption continues to rear its ugly head in our government, despite EDSA 1 and EDSA Dos. All Filipinos, I bow their heads in shame that we, the only Christian nation in Asia has been tagged as the third most corrupt in Asia and we are ranked the 11th most corrupt nation in the world!

If this survey came out during the Erap administration, yes, I would still bow my head in shame, but understand why. But with Erap booted out of Malacanang, one would think that we should be succeeding in our war against corruption, but obviously we’re not improving. This latest survey only shows that we’re a long way from solving our problems with corruption, despite all those lifestyle and now the nightlife checks on the police that the Arroyo administration has been doing.

But rather than put on a sack cloth and sprinkle ash over our bodies in shame and remorse, we must look at this with a new resolve – that we must weed out the evil and the corrupt in our society. For instance, we know that the menace of illegal drugs has grown considerably and we seem helpless in solving this problem. Well, it only we solved the problem of corruption, then too can we solve the problem of illegal drugs. After all, the illegal drug trade flourishes in a very corrupt society. As the old saying goes; "for evil to flourish, it is enough for good men or women to do nothing!" So where do we start?

Let me point out two important government agencies that should start rethinking its policies so that at least, we’d know that the Arroyo government is deadly serious about exacting reforms where it is needed. That’s the Civil Service Commission (CSC) and the Commission on Audit (COA). First of all, it was CSC Chairperson Karina David who disclosed that $48 billion or P2.6 trillion was lost to corrupt practices. I don’t dispute her figures… but what is the CSC doing to make people in the government responsible for their actions? It’s been perceived that the CSC has gone overboard in protecting the government employees for too long. Yes, it must protect the good and deserving employees, but if should throw out the undeserving and corrupt, including the lazy ones.

While we’ve written numerous examples about corruption, let me point out that a lot of this money is lost due to negligence or plain stupidity! Let me cite what happened to the National Power Corporation (NPC) years ago, where NPC officials were smart enough to think ahead and purchase a crankshaft for one of the thermal plants. When the time it is needed, at least we already have a spare on standby and the government would be able to save time and money having this spare already in their care.

So when one of the thermal plants conked out and needed a new crankshaft, it was easy enough to install the new one and so they did. But lo and behold, the new one was utterly useless, because it was already vibrating beyond the allowable tolerance. It turned out that there was a maintenance schedule just for keeping this part in storage and that was not done. In the end, NPC had to buy another crankshaft, which was now almost double the original price. Add the cost to the purchase of that spare crankshaft and there you have it… it has cost NPC almost double for one part. Now was anyone sent to prison for this stupidity? No! Civil Service even cleared the manager of the plant when he retired, without any accountability.

As for the COA, they too have stories becoming legends in their supposed fanatical way to guard that the taxpayer’s money isn’t stolen. But hello, despite the presence of COA, government money is still stolen which only proves that something is terribly wrong with the policies of COA. What is important is not that government money is stolen, but also well spent. Since we too have numerous stories about COA policies, due to limited space, allow me to cite only one that COA still enforces today.

We know too well that COA is limiting the allowances of government personnel who have to travel to Manila to follow up some papers. I was on a plane with a government Regional Director and upon arrival, he was met by a luxury vehicle. I asked him if this was their official car, no it wasn’t. He was honest enough to admit that if he didn’t have "friends", he couldn’t go around Manila in comfort and convenience and in this case, in luxury because he couldn’t afford all this with the allowance that COA approves for his office, including the cost of meals and the hotel expenses.

In the end, COA’s rules forces these government people to be "creative" or succumb to the temptation offered by unscrupulous businessmen just waiting in the wings to spot a government official’s weakness. Now that fellow was a high ranking official, how much more for the lower ranked officials or the technical people who are just as vital in giving services to our people? On this issue alone, millions are lost and that’s just for a trip to Manila. Perhaps we should move the seat of the government to the Province of Bohol, where things are relatively cheaper. In Brazil, they did just that, move their seat of government into the rainforest and called it Brasilia.

Why don’t we tackle the government’s bidding process? Today, we live with the fact that office supplies or materials are bided out, a lengthy and judicious process that we in the private sector could only smirk. Again, what’s important is not getting the lowest bid for paper but that the right price is paid. In today’s government purchases for pens and paper, chances are, you’d find it cheaper to buy them in the National Bookstore than anywhere else. So why bid them in the first place?

As a matter of suggestion, what the government ought to do is merely get all the prices for materials and products every six months and pin their suppliers to these prices so that if purchases are made within the time frame, it should not be sold more than the published prices. This should make the work of COA easier, but unfortunately they chose to go to the old ways of biding and in the end, taxpayer’s money is lost.

For instance, if government bids out flashlight batteries, I’m sure that a supplier from China would win that contest. But in the end, what kind of quality are we getting? What is clear to us is that the government’s tried and tested ways of awarding bids to the lowest bidder has resulted in the government’s getting the worse supplies. What should be important to COA are not the lowest bid, but the best bid. Want to weed out corruption? Start with changing COA’s rules and the CSC should stop protecting the corrupt!

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For email responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns can also be accessed through www.thefreeman.com. He also hosts a weekly talk show entitled, "Straight from the Sky" shown every Monday only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 on SkyCable at 8 p.m.