Marcos warns vs grandstanding

PRESIDENT Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. has directed national government agencies to eliminate political grandstanding in distributing of state aid and to fast-track the digitization of frontline services to ease the burden on Filipino citizens.

Citing public feedback regarding senior citizens being forced to wait and listen to repetitive political speeches before receiving assistance, he said that such activities are strictly prohibited by Department of the Interior and Local Government circulars and the General Appropriations Act.

“As long as these are national government programs, speeches and other forms of grandstanding before the distribution will no longer be allowed,” Mr. Marcos said in Filipino in his BBM VLOG 278 Sagot sa Polisiya released on Sunday.

“Government services cannot be used for politicking or self-promotion,” he added.

To streamline aid delivery, he encouraged local government units to study and adopt digital payout systems, noting Makati City’s use of mobile wallets like GCash.

Aside from aid distribution, Mr. Marcos is pushing for the digitization of civil registry services to eliminate the “tortuous” process of correcting clerical errors in birth certificates, which currently forces citizens to travel long distances.

“In my view, with the improvements we have made using e-gov and the internet, this should be one of the services we no longer have to worry about,” he said. — Erika Mae P. Sinaking