EDITORIAL - Honest and efficient service

In celebration of the 113th year of the Philippine bureaucracy, civil servants enjoyed free rides on overhead railways, free entrance at government-run museums and galleries, and discounts and freebies at Jollibee outlets and SM department stores. The perks acknowledged the service rendered by government employees, many of whom are honest, competent and dedicated to their work – contrary to the image portrayed by the rotten eggs in their midst.

Those rotten eggs demand money to grease the wheels of public service, creating red tape at every step to encourage the payment of grease money. Others, a number of whom owe their appointments to political connections rather than merit, are simply incompetent and unfit for the job. Their appointments go against the spirit of the law passed on Sept. 19, 1900, titled, “An Act for the Establishment and Maintenance of an Efficient and Honest Civil Service in the Philippine Islands.” In seeking to create a professional bureaucracy, Act No. 5 also aimed to institutionalize a merit-based system of appointment and promotion.

After 113 years, efficiency and honesty are still works in progress in the Philippine bureaucracy. In recent decades, the national leadership generally failed to present role models for honesty and efficiency in the civil service. Instead the nation’s highest officials themselves were implicated in large-scale corruption, and led the way in preventing the development of a merit-based appointment and promotion system in government service.

The month-long events marking the establishment of the civil service aim to honor those who do not bring shame to the term “public servant.” There are many of them in the bureaucracy – teachers, health professionals, auditors, clerks, social welfare workers, soldiers who are risking life and limb fighting rebels in Zamboanga, and even policemen whose dedicated work has been eclipsed by negative reports about the scalawags in the service. The nation is not lacking in honest and efficient civil servants. Policies and structural changes must be implemented to make their brand of service the norm throughout the bureaucracy.