Jobs to kill for

We pay taxes with the understanding that the government can efficiently manage the funds for the proper delivery of services to the people.

The key word is “efficient.” Where is the efficiency when government officials assign for their personal or partisan use an inordinate amount of people’s money, and feel no need to provide a public accounting of their expenditures?

Allocation of government funds and resources is as inequitable as the yawning income gap. Just consider the deployment of security forces who are on the payroll of Juan and Juana de la Cruz. How many Philippine National Police members are on bodyguard duty, keeping even the families and mistresses of politicians safe (as well as judiciary members and even business tycoons)? The police to population ratio stands at around one cop for every 500 people – VIPs exempted.

Even in salaries, the pay scales of government health professionals and teachers are dismayingly low, especially when compared to the pensions of retired military and uniformed personnel as well as members of the judiciary. A three-star general and a justice, for example, have a monthly pension of around P200,000 a month. We shouldn’t wonder why our nurses and teachers continue to leave in droves for other countries.

Hiring in government is based not so much on need but on patronage, which is rarely merit-based. We shouldn’t wonder why we have such mediocre government services.

The public payroll keeps expanding, with no corresponding growth in revenue collection or gross domestic production. Our idea of job creation is to increase positions in government.

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For every problem, the go-to solution is to create a new executive department, which can be packed with political appointees. There’s an unending effort to carve out new provinces and cities. Each new province, city, town or district means new offices with new staff, additional seats in Congress and consequently a bigger allocation for party-list representation, all of them with “extraordinary and miscellaneous expenses” that elude regular audit.

Instead of pouring scarce government funds into the optimal delivery of basic services and implementation of development projects, state revenues are eaten up by personnel expenses, plus the rapidly expanding secret funds that public officials are now scrambling to get their claws on.

When the expenditures are geared toward meeting personal needs rather than delivering government services, revenue raising can also be arbitrary and unreasonable.

You can see this in the barangays, which are authorized to raise their own funds for their use.

With the approach of the barangay elections, consider why village officials impose a mountain of unnecessary and onerous fees for as many activities as possible. The objective is not to improve the delivery of public services or to encourage entrepreneurship or promote economic activities that can generate jobs and livelihoods.

Rather, the objectives are to build a nice barangay hall, buy vehicles that often end up for personal use, or buy equipment or build facilities that can be rented out and raise more funds, for more of the same.

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President Marcos, like his predecessors, promised at the start of his term that there would be “rightsizing” in the bureaucracy.

We have yet to see any agency shedding bureaucratic bloat. Instead a Department of Migrant Workers has been created, with more new agencies being planned.

The billions wasted on unnecessary personnel, maintenance and other operating expenses, plus more billions in secret funds for the undeserving, can instead be used to significantly improve our public health and education facilities, modernize our agriculture or at least give our farmers the long-promised farm support services.

With efficient revenue utilization, patrol capability in our sovereign waters can be boosted. And we need not rely on the private sector to build roads that are supposed to ease traffic. This objective is not attained because the prohibitive road tolls keep out the majority of motorists.

Toll is collected even on short bypass roads. Why can’t the government build roads in traffic-choked urban centers for free public use? Where do our taxes go?

And why do even new roads, still in good condition, keep getting torn down and then repaired? The public works chief told Congress that the practice is part of preventive maintenance. In my part of town, the asphalt pavement on the main thoroughfare has withstood floods, typhoons, Taal vog in 2020 and heavy traffic for many years now, without developing potholes and needing periodic destruction and rebuilding.

Apart from aggravating the already horrid traffic in Metro Manila, such roadworks tend to reinforce the findings of a World Bank Group study, that road projects are among the biggest sources of corruption in developing countries.

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The continuing revelations about the weakness of public accountability in the utilization of public funds have ignited conversations about why the nation is in such a sorry state.

People are starting to understand why people who join government see their assets expand impressively.

Ombudsman Samuel Martires has tried to be the gatekeeper of the secrecy of questionable assets in high office. But the ongoing mutual airing of dirty linen about secret funds is allowing scrutiny of another aspect of officials’ questionable wealth.

Government officials, who should have a keen understanding that they are on the public payroll, instead behave as if the public owes them VIP treatment. They freely spend and generously give away money that belongs to the people.

In most of the advanced economies and progressive societies, there’s a clear line between public and private funds and resources, which civilians and the government rank and file alike recognize. Those who work in these governments truly serve the greater good instead of personal and family interests.

Public servants in these countries take responsibility for failures and gross errors, with no need to remind them about delicadeza; they can resign with grace, instead of clinging to their positions like leeches.

In New Zealand, two prime ministers have resigned because the job has become exhausting. Jacinda Ardern, who noted that “with such a privileged role comes responsibility,” explained: “I know what this job takes. And I know that I no longer have enough in the tank to do it justice.”

This is unimaginable in the Philippines, where people commit murder even over positions in the barangay.

We’re getting a clearer picture of the reasons for this, and it’s not pretty.