Excuses

I went to CREBA's Mindanao Housing Summit last Friday and I was slightly turned off by the ROD's reply to the issues presented by the association.

The first module or talk delved into discussing the concerns involving the LRA (Land Registration Authority) and the ROD (Registry of Deeds). The representative for the LRA was quite safe since only seldom do the CREBA members have something to transact with the LRA. The representative for the ROD, Deputy Registrar of Deeds for Davao City Jorlyn Paralisan, was unfortunately grilled under the spotlight since the brunt of the problems with land titles lies with the ROD.

The Cagayan de Oro Chapter did their homework on the talk/module they hosted. One speaker had a complete presentation itemizing comprehensively the issues one encounters with the ROD. Issues ranged from bribery, fixers, unsatisfactory turnaround times, to incompetent personnel, perennial lack of judicial forms, and so on. They also provided recommendations to these concerns but the presentation itself bore the atmosphere of an inquisition, with the CREBA representative castigating the ROD for not doing its job.

When it was Ma'am Jorlyn's time to speak, she acknowledged all these problems and, from thereon, lamented about the enormous workload she had, going into detail of how she's been working her ass off to finish her backlogs.

It was a classic appeal to pity, an appeal to make the audience more considerate of her hardships and more lenient with their demands. As for me, I could only smile since, by the end of the talks, there were no concrete solutions spouted by the registrar. All we had were vacuous promises that they'll be better moving forward if the ROD's clients themselves would be more patient.

Personally, I could have appreciated the talk better if Ma'am Jorlyn had commented on some steps to alleviate these concerns. Say, there's some effort to rationalize the workload with the number of personnel on hand by increasing the number of registrars per ROD or increasing the powers of their deputies. Perhaps, she could also have said that they're continuously conducting training to better improve their people or they're actually cracking down on employees who demand or are receiving bribes. Any one of these blanket semi-responses could have made me feel better and perhaps made me feel that the ROD is indeed trying its best.

Instead, we were treated to a protracted excuse. 

Postscript: The next time I'll be visiting the ROD, I'll probably be blacklisted because of what I just wrote. That's the risk here.