Real mailing expenses

MANILA, Philippines - This is in connection with the article “SolGen’s Mailing Bill for 2009: P4.8M” which appeared in your paper today. It reports a COA finding that the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) could have saved P4,805,025.50 if it took advantage of its franking privilege in the delivery of mail matters as provided under Section 9 of RA 9417, the OSG Reform Law.

Kindly be informed that the OSG had requested the Philippine Postal Corporation (PPC) to adopt a system for the OSG to take full advantage of its franking privileges as provided by law. The extent of the privilege granted by the PPC was, however, limited to domestic ordinary official mail matters addressed to the Government and or government offices and mail matters addressed to private individuals and/or private offices below 120 grams. The OSG is required by the PPC to pay postage fees for registered mails and those in excess of 120 grams.

Please note that as the law firm of the Government, the big bulk of the OSG’s outgoing documents in the cases it handles before the courts are sent by REGISTERED MAIL. Many of these also weigh more than 120 grams and, under the said PPC authority, cannot be mailed by the OSG free of charge. Letters and legal documents are only sent by the OSG through commercial couriers when these are urgent and need to be delivered right away. The COA has already been apprised by the OSG of this.

The OSG nevertheless continues to seek the reconsideration of the PPC on this matter so that it can further lessen mailing expenses occasioned by its handling of cases for the Republic of the Philippines.

Thank you very much for allowing us to make this clarification.