Enforce Attrition Act to clean up Customs

It does not compute. For traffic sanity, Manila Mayor Joseph Estrada is barring colorum (un-franchised) metropolitan buses from entering the city limits. This is congesting traffic along the main road to Manila from Quezon City. So metropolitan authorities are rerouting the buses to side streets, to turn back before reaching the boundary.

Questions: If those buses are colorum, then why let them ply any route at all — on main roads or side streets, in Manila or Quezon City or elsewhere? So why can’t the metro officials take the cue from Estrada and kick them all out? Are not public utilities required to secure franchises, so that the government can plan and regulate them, and equalize breaks for business?

This is a simple matter of enforcing the law.

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The same goes for the Bureau of Customs.

For two weeks the public has been treated to a series of dramatics in the agency. These ranged from President Noynoy Aquino lambasting the BOC in his State of the Nation for duty-collection shortfalls year after year, to Commissioner Rufino Biazon offering by text message to resign, to Aquino declining it also by text, to blogs exposing the BOC’s supposed “three kings” (big-shot old-timers) and their political patrons, to Biazon ordering the 54 major and sub-port collectors to turn in letters relinquishing their posts, to all but one complying albeit grudgingly, to Malacañang saying it will keep secret for now its reform game plan for the agency.

All those — including Biazon’s constant musings about needing to abolish the agency — are way off the mark. They only distract attention from the Lateral Attrition Act of 2005 that governs the BOC. And it had to take yet more dramatics — the holdout port collector, a protégé of the Iglesia ni Cristo religious bloc, likewise texting about the meaninglessness of relinquishment letters since Biazon has the power to remove them anyway – to remind everyone of the law.

Of course, it’s one thing to be reminded, and another to heed the reminder, which we shall soon see from Biazon.

The Attrition Act rewards and punishes officers and employees of the BOC (and the Bureau of Internal Revenue) for meeting or missing collection targets. If they exceed the target by up to 30 percent, they get a 15-percent slice of the excess. Of any excess above 30 percent, they get a 20-percent cut. The rewards are to be divvied up by all, based on the proportion of the effort put in. If their collections fall short by at least 7.5 percent, then off with the officers and staff.

BOC and BIR personnel questioned the constitutionality of the law. But the Supreme Court upheld it in 2008. After all, the law gave the taxmen a head start via increased salaries and fringe benefits. The BOC-BIR men again cried against the law in 2012, asking Congress to repeal it. Pending any legislative action, they and Malacañang have no choice but to enforce the law. The door is always open for bellyachers to leave.

Presumably the port collectors and staff who have not left since 2005 now accept the law. So with the BOC chief they must set realistic individual monthly targets, consolidate these into the agency’s total for the year, and devise strategies and tactics. That is the way to draw up a coherent plan of action.

Presumably, too, the finance secretary checks on the BOC (and BIR) through a nine-man team that he chairs: the Revenue Performance Evaluation Board that deals out the rewards and punishments. The finance chief bases on the BOC-BIR figures his inputs to the Cabinet-level Development Budget Coordinating Council. From the figures, too, he justifies to Congress the Executive’s proposed general appropriations.

Biazon has missed all his monthly targets since becoming BOC chief in September 2011. As the appointer, President Aquino could have fired him instead of having to ask all BOC officers on national television where they get the gall to stay in office despite unmet targets.

Apparently the President still trusts Liberal Party-mate Biazon to do the job, and it is his prerogative to retain him.

But there’s still the Lateral Attrition Act to enforce. Biazon needs to review each port collector’s target versus accomplishment, and mete out the rewards and punishments accordingly. What’s so difficult about that?

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Still on enforcing the law.

Unruly throngs caught the Comelec’s field offices by surprise on the last two days of the ten-day voter registration. Allegedly, unnamed politicos had bused in those unexpected tens of thousands of adults. Thus were crowded out the adolescents, aged 15 to 17, who had priority to sign up for the Youth Council elections in October.

So what has the poll agency done about it? Did it give the disenfranchised youths extra days to list up? No. Did it try to find out why so many adults suddenly turned up? No.

The adults were re-registering as voters. They probably are new residents. Or, they had been delisted for failing to vote in the last two elections. They had not voted either for legitimate reasons or had been paid by dirty politicos to stay home. They now wish to regain their right to vote because the all-important barangay election is coming up, or they plan to sell their vote all over again. Some of them could be squatters trying to establish false proof of residence to avoid relocation. Did the Comelec separate the chaff from the grain, as it should? No.

So what it has now is an incomplete list of youth voters, coupled with a polluted list of renewed adult voters.

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