THE Anti-Red Tape Authority (ARTA) said businessmen must not be afraid to go to them if they need help with working with government agencies on certain regulatory requirements.
ARTA director Ernesto Perez cited the case of Texas Instruments, whom they helped with a regulator.
“One big investor has come to us because they have this problem with a particular government agency which issued a regulation that cannot be complied with because the technology is not available in the country,” he said yesterday.
“So what happened, after ARTA conducted successive consultation meetings, that government agency decided to suspend the implementation and even relaxed the implementation and that company is very grateful,” he noted.
He further explained: “We can allay the fears of these investors. What we’re doing is we can handhold with them, they can pinpoint to us that particular (local government unit) or agency wherein they’re having difficulty and ARTA will be there ready to go hand-in-hand with them.” Perez also said that investors and the general public must not be afraid to file complaints with them, noting that they also act on anonymous complaints.
“For transparency and accountability purposes, they should not fear. There’s nothing to hide,” he said.
“Based on a complaint filed before us or on an anonymous complaint, we can investigate. And the resolution rate of our legal department is 99 percent. We act fast,” he stressed.
The agency meanwhile addressed criticisms that it was itself slow to act on complaints, based on a Commission on Audit report.
Perez said this was due to them letting go of an automated complaints handling system due to budgetary constraints and switching back to a manual system. (ABS-CBN News)
