Entrepreneurial Farmer

Ambrosio R. Villorente

LGU Kalibo Assures Prompt
Service Delivery

Local Government Unit of Kalibo has come out with a "Citizen’s Charter" Volume I. A copy is provided to the Aklan Press Club, Inc. Thank you very much Mayor Raymar A. Rebaldo for giving us a copy which is now available in the office for any member to read.

This Citizen’s Charter is an official document, a service standard, or a pledge, that com-municates, in simple terms, information or the services provided by the govern-ment to its citizens. It describes the step-by-step procedure for availing a particular service, and the guaranteed performance level that they may expect for that service."

It also includes vision and mission statements, services offered recipients of a service, the step-by-step procedure to obtain a particular service, the officer and employee responsible, the maximum time to conclude the process the clients must present documents, the amount of fees, procedure for filing complaints. It also includes names and contact details of the officials to approach.

Advantages

Citizen’s Charter will hasten customer satis-faction as it will result to high performance standards of public service delivery. It will promote equal treatment of customers brought about by clear and transparent procedure.
In case the quality and standard of services are not met, proper complaints and redress mechanism are provided the clients.

Moreover, Citizen’s Charter provides opportunity for people participation in service improvement. An avenue for customer feedback, suggestions, and recom-mendations should be put in place.

On the part of LGU Kalibo, it will reduce cost of public service delivery. It will also reduce vulnerability to graft and corruption as it provides less discretion to the service providers. The feedback mechanism provides adequate information for LGU on the excellent or worst performance LGU is providing its clients. This information received will enable LGU to gauge its service delivery performance. The feedback will provide basis in the assessment of performance.

Regulatory Services

But what are provided in the Citizen’s Charter are the LGU regulatory and taxing functions. It discusses the process to obtain mayor’s permit, tricycle operation permit, marriage application, issuances of building permits among others. The local civil registrar records births, and deaths. It also issues birth and death certificates.

It does not include law and ordinance enforcement, such as compliance to the provisions of the building code, laws, and ordinance, traffic laws, rules and regulations. Are these not service to the clients?

The Citizen’s Charter does not include the proprietary functions of the LGU. How long for the KAMB to submit report on the accomplishments on Ati-Atihan festival after the third Sunday of January of its year, with particularly emphasis on "Financial Report?" It does not mention how Kalibo Public Market and Shopping Center be managed specially its facilities like the toilet, lights and garbage trucks.

LGU Kalibo Citizen’s Charter is a good start for effective and productive public service. But com-pliance and enforcement of laws, ordinances, rules, and regulation in the Municipality of Kalibo are the demand of the time.

Kalibo will be highly people friendly if all the people can walk along the streets of Kalibo breathing with clean, fresh air, safe to traffic and sidewalk vendors, and free of road obstructions and of uniform elevation with enough light in the evening. /MP