I thought that the application process for NBI Clearance would be streamlined and rid of corruption since their satellite office was only a few feet away from Sonny Belmonte – run, Quezon City Hall. And when I applied for it a few years back, I didn’t think it would be as bad as it was today.

People who were there simply to claim their NBI Clearance – meaning they already had gone through the payment, picture taking, finger-printing, and information input – a chain of processes that would take 30 minutes at the most – were waiting in a line for an average of 3 hours. Why would an almost flawless process have such a bottleneck when what is expected is that the Clearance only needs to be printed out. If there is a “hit”, shouldn’t this already be sorted out since they ask the person applying to come back after a week anyway?

Managers of this satellite office clearly have no knowledge of best queing practices. If they can afford to have 3 people in the Payment window, and 3 people in the Information Input Window, why can’t they allot 3 people instead of 1 in the Releasing window? And why is there only 1 Releasing window when their are 3 windows for other parts of the process.

The real reason is that there are fixers who take advantage of a 3-hour Releasing line. A guy beside me decided to pay 120 pesos when a fixer approached him and told him he could get his NBI Clearance within 5 minutes. And true enough, the man who was in the line next to me was able to go home within 5 minutes while I had wait in line for 3 hours. People wonder why the line takes so long. If a fixer approaches an NBI Employee to get a clearance, they have to spend time looking for the record, and the fixer has to give the NBI employee his cut in the payment. This introduces significant delays. So while one Filipino saves time because he paid 120 pesos, an amount more expensive than the NBI Clearance Fee of 115 pesos, 100 other Filipinos end up wasting their time waiting in line.

Another problem I see is the need to buy wet-naps from the guy in-charge of finger printing. He charges 5 pesos per wet-nap since he reasons that a person must want their hands clean after getting it dirty with ink during the finger printing process. But a typical wet-nap only costs about 50 centavos. He is using geographic-monopoly practices (he is the only person providing the service with the “blessing” of the NBI) in order to charge an exorbitant price. Even if you factor in the price of the ink being used in finger-printing, the price being charged for the wet-nap is too high. And shouldn’t the 115 peso fee for the NBI clearance cover all costs?

And fingerprints take a long time to really change. So government should just determine the last time you renewed your NBI clearance. If it was 10 years ago, then you should have your finger prints freshly taken, but if it was just last year, then the NBI employees should simply print out the old fingerprints on record.

Chalk this one up as one of the worst Philippine government services I’ve experienced.