ILOILO City – Barangays in this city are now under pressure to streamline frontline services as the Anti-Red Tape Authority (ARTA) expands the implementation of the Ease of Doing Business and Efficient Government Service Delivery Act down to the grassroots level.
Iloilo City Local Economic Development and Investment Promotion (LEDIP) office head Velma Jane Lao said barangay governments are now required to adopt reforms previously enforced only at the city hall, ensuring faster, transparent, and accountable transactions.
“This time, it is expanded in barangay LGUs (local government units). The purpose of this is to promote transparency and accountability in barangays,” Lao said in an interview.
A three-day training for all 180 barangays was recently conducted by ARTA personnel, guiding local officials in crafting their Citizen’s Charter — a mandatory document that spells out services available and sets specific processing timelines: three days for simple transactions, seven days for complex ones, and 20 days for technical dealings.
Barangays were also introduced to zero-backlog reporting to ensure no pending tasks remain unacted upon, and to the Client Satisfaction Measure to assess the quality of service delivery.
“These are the reports being complied by the city government every year. We have to abide by that because that is our service standard or commitment to the public availing of our services,” Lao stressed.
While no deadline was set, Lao expressed hope that all barangays would start drafting their Citizen’s Charter and standardize processing times to align with ARTA regulations.
She added that full compliance by barangays would elevate Iloilo City’s overall performance in good governance and public service delivery./PN