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Thursday, March 28, 2024

The utility of targets

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THE new chairman of the Metro Manila Development Authority, Danilo Lim, has his work cut out for him. The traffic problem in Metro Manila, he says, has been building up over the last 20 years, yet the public seems to expect overnight solutions.

Such expectations are unreasonable, of course, and we would be the first to assure the MMDA chairman that we entertain no thoughts of immediate results.

On the other hand, Lim should not fault the public for wanting to know how he plans to tackle the traffic problem and when he expects to show results.

But last week, Lim appeared irked when reporters asked him if he had a timeline for when the MMDA would solve the worsening traffic situation in Metro Manila.

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The former army general said he should not be pressured by the public.

“Don’t ask me about timeline because you cannot tie me into that. We’re not time-bound here,” he said in Filipino. “That’s an unfair question. How old is this traffic situation, 20 years. And then you want us to come up with a solution overnight?”

With all due respect to the new MMDA chairman, nobody said anything about an overnight solution. A detailed plan with a series of time-bound targets is not an immediate solution. It’s simply a plan by which everyone—the MMDA, the transport service providers, commuters and motorists—can move forward and measure our collective progress toward an ultimate goal.

Without such a detailed, time-bound plan, we would be back to trying ad hoc solutions that may or may not work, carried out by government workers who go about their jobs with no sense of urgency because there are no time-bound targets. We would also have no way to measure our progress against specific targets.

Mr. Lim is wrong when he says he will not be pressured by the public. The public, especially taxpayers who pay his salary, have all the right in the world to expect results, not overnight, but certainly within a reasonable time.

Commuters, motorists and Metro Manila residents who have suffered for years at the hands of a long line of inefficient, inept or corrupt government officials, absolutely have the right to demand a timeline from their public servants.

Public servants, on the other hand, should not be so arrogant as to say they will not be bound by deadlines or targets. In a democracy where elected officials are answerable to the public, the bureaucrats they appoint to office are just as answerable.

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