The stupidest government regulation

Counterpoint

By Alvin Capino

We have seen many stupid and senseless government regulations. Easily, the stupidest of them all is the one implemented by the government, not only under the Aquino administration but under all previous governments, regulating the inspection and sticker marking on motorcycles of the Department of Trade and Industry.

This is disappointing especially since the head of the Trade and Industry Department, Secretary Gregory Domingo, has a master’s degree from Wharton and the Asian Institute of Management and has a B.S. Management Engineering degree from the Ateneo. A proven technocrat and management expert, Domingo strikes us as a reasonable and practical man.

His deputy in implementing what’s supposed to be a simple task of ensuring that motorcycle riders wear proper helmets, as mandated by the Motorcycle Helmet Act Consumer, is Welfare Undersecretary Zenaida Maglaya—a seasoned bureaucrat who has survived and prospered in the DTI through several administrations.

However, Domingo and Maglaya have turned the simple job of getting an Import Commodity Clearance or ICC sticker on a motorcycle helmet into a major undertaking. It has thus become a costly and tedious exercise for the public, whom the law requires to get a sticker for their motorcycle helmets.

The regulation for an ICC sticker is supposed to be for the protection of motorcycle riders. Domingo and Maglaya however have issued implementing rules and regulations that smack of unreasonable red tape.

There are almost 3.5 million motorcycles and scooters registered in the Philippines, so you can start to imagine how many motorcycle helmets have to be inspected and be given ICC stickers.

In fact, in Metro Manila alone, there are some 800,000 registered motorcycles. When DTI initially set a deadline for the free inspection of motorcycle helmets in its Makati office, there was chaos and a monumental traffic jam near the DTI office.

Also, the fact that there could be many users of one motorcycle and many of them would have riders should be considered. All of them need to wear helmets with ICC stickers. So the number of motorcycle helmets that need to get ICC stickers would be perhaps at least double the more than three million registered motorcycles.

Remember that the primary task of the DTI is to make sure that a motorcycle helmet meets safety standards. A sign of this is the ICC sticker.

Domingo, the technocrat and management expert, and his assistant Maglaya have come up with regulations that go beyond the scope of the DTI’s supposed primary task.

Consider what the DTI is asking before a motorcycle helmet can be inspected and before an ICC sticker is issued. two copies of a filled-out application form that should be downloaded from the DTI Website www.bps.dti.gov.ph; photocopy of a government issued ID (driver’s license, PRC license, postal ID, Comelec ID, etc.), and photocopy of motorcycle registration. An applicant, according to the DTI, also has to bring his motorcycle.

Aren’t Domingo and Maglaya, despite all their academic and professional credentials, acting stupid asking for all those unnecessary requirements? What do they need the motorcycle registration, the government ID and in fact even the application form to get an ICC sticker? The only thing that is actually needed is to ensure that the helmet meets the standards.

Beyond those documentary requirements, the DTI implementing rules get even stupider.

When we interviewed Maglaya on radio, we asked her about those who do not own a motorcycle but just hitch a ride. She said that in such cases those, who just hitch a ride should accompany the motorcycle owner when he registers with the DTI.

The DTI rules also state that a motorcycle owner cannot register more than one helmet. The reason for this, according to Maglaya, is to prevent fixers from taking advantage of the situation.

Shouldn’t Malacanang remind Domingo and Maglaya that they should cut the red tape and remove all those unreasonable and stupid regulations that they are imposing? The task of DTI is to put ICC stickers on helmets that meet regulations.

It has nothing to do with ownership of a motorcycle or whether the registration is current or not and other things that the DTI is sticking its finger into. The Land Transportation Office is the agency— not the DTI—that should do all those things.

To simplify things, what DTI should do is to do away with all the documentary requirements that it is now imposing. It must stick to inspecting and putting ICC stickers on all motorcycle helmets brought to it for inspection.

They should allow people to bring as many helmets as they want, whether one or 100, for inspection to get an ICC sticker. That’s all that the DTI is supposed to do, anyway.