TABUK, Kalinga– Heads and supervisors of the different offices of the city government are undergoing a four-day orientation workshop this week to craft their upgraded Citizen’s Charter to further streamline transactions and cut processing time at the City Hall as mandated by Republic Act (RA) 11032, or the Ease of Doing Business and Efficient Government Service Delivery Act of 2018.
The Citizen’s Charter is an official document that communicates, in simple terms, the service standards of frontline services that an office is providing to its citizens. Usually posted in front of government offices, it describes the step-by-step procedure to avail of a particular service, the person responsible for each step, the documents needed to be submitted, the fees to be paid, if any and the time allotted for the delivery of the service.
In his lecture, Civil Service Commission-Kalinga Provincial Director Ruben Wacas explained that RA 11032 cuts red tape in government transactions even further with the expansion of the mandate to craft a Citizen’s Charter to cover not only frontline offices but all government agencies in the executive branch including national government agencies, local government units, government-owned and – controlled corporations, and other government instrumentalities.
In their revised Citizen’s Charter, government offices are required to follow specific processing times of client transactions: three days for simple transactions, seven days for complex transactions, 20 days for highly technical transactions, and 45 days for transactions that require the approval of the Sanggunian.
Other improvements to be introduced with the revised Citizen’s Charter in government offices include the reduction in the number of signatures to not more than three; simplification of application forms or documentary requirements; automation or computerization of processes and services, if applicable; and reduction in the processing time and fees of transactions.
Since the passage of RA 11032, the city government has implemented reforms to improve the delivery of services to the public as well as to make it easier to do business in the city.
It would be recalled that in January this year, the city government launched the electronic Business Permits and Licensing System (eBPLS) automating the process of registering and renewing business permits, the first local government unit in Kalinga to do so.
Mayor Darwin Estrañero has been pressing for the crafting of the revised Citizen’s Charter of all departments of the city government to ease the process of transacting at the City Hall as mandated by the law. By Iryll Sicnao