Paranaque ranked No. 1 in battle against red tape — bantay.ph

From Paranaque City Public Information Office:

AN INDEPENDENT anti-corruption watchdog has ranked Parañaque as the top and most compliant among all Metro Manila cities in eliminating red tape and corruption in conducting transactions at the city hall.

Bantay.ph has given the city government an over-all score of 90.73 per cent which is equivalent to 4.5 stars to emerge as the runaway winner among all the 16 cities in the National Capital Region (NCR).

It is followed by Marikina with 89.15 ;Taguig with 83.66 ; Mandaluyong with 82.88 and completing the top five is Malabon with 82.61.

They are scored based on several categories such as fixer alert, facilities, basic compliance, transparency and process flow.

This developed as Mayor Edwin Olivarez lauded the employees and officials of the city government “for truly and faithfully discharging their jobs as civil servants which is the primary reason why they are winning the trust and confidence of the people”.

“I would like to commend everyone especially our employees for their tireless initiatives in looking for ways on how we can better serve our people” Olivarez said.

Bantay.ph is an independent civil society organization that utilizes citizen feedback in gauging quality of public service.

The group sends student volunteers also called city watchers to conduct surveys on different government offices.

This year, they focused on city halls – particularly monitoring process relating to starting a business.

Students are briefed beforehand on what to watch out for and are also asked to survey 30 clients of the office being monitored. Volunteers are asked to do three visits per office and scores are averaged based on the visits.

The highest possible score which is 5-star is based on Bantay.ph’s standard of service based on the different surveyed elements.

Bantay.ph primary objective is to see to it that red tape and other forms of corruption are eliminated in the conduct government transactions.

“Despite having several anti-corruption laws, the Philippines still suffers from grand and petty crimes of corruption. It is not absent legislation, it is absent implementation. Citizens can CHANGE that. It starts by knowing your rights. Hold government accountable by knowing what you are entitled to” the group’s website declared.

Last May, Bantay.ph partnered with Fly Dev, a youth organization that provides socially relevant volunteer opportunities to student leaders, for “Summer Undercover.”

It was the biggest data collection activity of Bantay.ph with 60 volunteers from Fly Dev to cover the different cities of Metro Manila.

As a good governance organization, Bantay.ph regularly fields youth volunteers to visit different city halls to check the quality of frontline services.