One with the Philippines

Pop music stars of the US and Britain and renowned sports teams have expressed their support for victims of Super Typhoon Yolanda. Today a Bangladeshi navy ship is scheduled to arrive in the Philippines, bearing relief goods for the victims.

The world is with us in our hour of need. It’s heartwarming to see that nearly a month after Yolanda struck, the outpouring of sympathy and solid aid from all over the world continues.

We can best repay this impressive generosity by showing the world that the aid is properly utilized. This means clearly identifying the donors and releasing the aid to the intended recipients or projects. It means no repacking of relief goods to mask the source and benefit epal or credit-grabbing officials. It means no red tape, no corruption scandals.

That still-growing mountain of foreign donations means the world will be watching the relief and reconstruction effort in the disaster zones. Surely the monitoring will not be constant, but donors will keep an eye out for efficient utilization. This will be true especially among donor governments, which must answer to their taxpayers in their allocations of foreign aid.

Several foreign officials involved in the relief effort have told me in private that days after Yolanda struck, it looked like Malacañang still appeared as shell-shocked as the victims, with no coherent plan on the ground.

But in general, the foreigners here have been kinder than Filipinos in assessing the government’s response to the disaster, and I don’t think the foreigners are simply being diplomatic. They can be quite critical when they see their taxpayers’ money being misused or wasted.

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Several governments have committed to stay with us through the arduous reconstruction phase. Al Dwyer of the US Agency for International Development (USAID)’s Office of US Foreign Disaster Assistance pointed out to me that they are still in earthquake-devastated Haiti and global aid for tsunami-hit Aceh in Indonesia ended only two years ago.

The reconstruction in the disaster areas of the Visayas will be a test of whether the Philippines deserves all the glowing reviews in recent years. “Asia’s rising star” should be able to handle post-disaster reconstruction much better than Haiti.

President Aquino and his team can’t invoke a lack of resources as an excuse. There’s an enormous amount of foreign and local aid being committed – financial, technical and in kind, both from official and private sources – in addition to the emergency funds set aside in the annual national appropriation.

The reconstruction effort cannot suffer the fate of the stillborn private-public partnership or PPP program.

It might help if the government explained to the public how it is keeping track of the huge amount of donations pouring in.

In the case of relief goods, which agency is receiving the goods, keeping an inventory, tracking the distribution and actual receipt by beneficiaries? Where are the goods being stored? There are concerns, not entirely baseless, that some of the relief goods could end up in the warehouses of certain politicians for distribution later in aid of re-election.

Keeping track of the items should not mean impounding the goods and drowning their release in a sea of red tape. It shouldn’t take an Einstein to devise an efficient system of receiving and distributing donated goods.

Attention is focused on Tacloban, but there are several other areas badly hit by the typhoon. Bohol and parts of Cebu are also still reeling from the recent magnitude 7.2 earthquake.

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Businesses need to be revived ASAP in the disaster zones. The national government must work with the local units to ensure that the country’s dismal ranking in international surveys on ease of doing business does not apply in the disaster areas.

There’s supposed to be a one-stop shop for the entry of foreign aid. A one-stop shop can also be set up in Tacloban and other hard-hit areas to jumpstart economic activity. The government can’t rely completely on foreign aid; the local private sector must come in, opening stores supplying construction materials, consumer electronics, food products, furniture and other household items. Investments must be lured to create jobs.

In Metro Manila under normal circumstances, securing all the required permits from local governments to open a business can take several months. Someone I know compared the process to eating glass shards.

The problem is not just the long wait for the paperwork to come through, but the bureaucratic corruption that daang matuwid cannot seem to eradicate. Every step of the process, every signature required is an opportunity for corruption, and those in charge do not hesitate to grab the opportunity to ask for grease money or “facilitation fee.”

It shouldn’t take rocket science to develop a better system of securing business and related permits. A deadline can be set for every step in the processing of each business application, with the person handling it identified. A delay at any step must lead to a performance demerit, which should bear weight in promotions and assignments. Think of the possibilities if such a system can be implemented in the Bureau of Customs.

Other countries can do it, and it’s no coincidence that they are the most competitive. In our case, inefficiency is built into the system to benefit a handful of individuals at the nation’s expense.

This kind of inefficiency cannot prevail if we want to fast-track the rehabilitation of disaster areas. Those who benefited from red tape in the past should set aside their personal interests if they want the disaster areas to get back quickly on their feet.

Some individuals may be tempted to demand bribes to fast-track their personal financial recovery. They can think of the looters in the immediate aftermath of the typhoon. Much of the looting was clearly driven by desperation. But there were hundreds of thousands of other desperate souls out there, and they didn’t resort to looting.

Of course there’s no telling what people will do to survive. In a life-and-death situation, it’s human nature to think of one’s own (and often, of loved ones’) survival first before others.

But rebuilding a city is no longer a life-and-death situation where the law of the jungle should prevail. For a community trying to get back on its feet, it is counterproductive to show kind souls who are trying to help that it’s every man for himself.

The world is watching the Philippines. We must show that we deserve all the sympathy and kindness showered on us.