DOF order rattles BOC execs, personnel

MANILA, Philippines - A directive crafted by the Department of Finance  (DOF)’s newly formed Revenue Cluster headed by Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) Commissioner Kim Henares has created a stir at the Bureau of Customs (BOC).

The DOF order directed all BOC officials and personnel to return to their mother unit.

In an interview with The STAR last Friday, Henares said the directive is only the first in a series of sweeping changes that the Revenue Cluster would be implementing to reform the BOC. The cluster covers the BIR, BOC and the Bureau of Local Government Finance.

“There are phases of reforms in the BOC. This is one phase, there is a second phase and there is a third phase,” Henares said.

The first wave of reform was implemented through Customs Personnel Order (CPO) B-134-2013 mandating all BOC officials and personnel to return to their mother unit, effectively revoking their current designations.

Ranking officials, including district collectors who will lose their present positions, have threatened to take legal action against Customs Commissioner Ruffy Biazon, the signatory in the revamp order.

“This is illegal. We will bring this issue to the courts,” a district collector said in an interview.

Henares, however, said there is nothing illegal about the order.

“The order merely says that you go back to where your item is. What’s illegal about that? Anyway, they are free to file a legal action,” the BIR chief told The STAR.

Henares said the directive was issued to correct wrong practices in the bureaucracy.

“In government, especially at the BIR and Customs, they don’t care what item they get as long as they get in. When they get in, they will do whatever they can to get a certain assignment. For example, there are messengers or utilities but they are assigned elsewhere,” she said.

“Now, (with the order) we can see the real strengths of the people. If there is a vacancy, that’s where the BOC will add people,” she added.