The problem of what is excessive government travel and what is not has been a problem to many administrations in the past. Different presidents dealt with this situation differently.
It used to be that all government officials in the executive department secured their travel permits directly from the Office of the President. This has now been decentralized to allow heads of offices to authorize foreign trips of their subordinates.
Because of President Duterte’s disdain of public officials becoming jetsetters at government expense, his office has since issued new guidelines for all heads of offices. They must submit periodic reports of officials who have traveled overseas to include expenses incurred during the trip.
In that new issuance from the Office of the President, it specifically banned junkets. A junket is a pleasure trip, often funded by someone else and more commonly associated with politicians.
In the case of officials in the executive branch, if the real purpose of the trip is for pleasure, and public funds were used, the trip can be classified as junket. Normally, when an official is granted authority to travel abroad, the authority includes all expenses allowed by the government such as per diems and other incidental expenses. Depending on the destination, flight duration and length of stay, all authorized expenses are itemized so that the government office where that official belongs can only draw the authorized amount and nothing more.
Travel to Europe and North America is usually more expensive than, say, Africa. This is so because of the higher cost of living there. On flight duration, a flight of more than nine hours usually allows a senior official a business class ticket. Lower ranked government officials get economy class tickets regardless of length of travel. Personal travel must also be sanctioned by the government wherein the travel authority will specifically mention that the travel is at no expense on the part of the government.
It would appear, therefore, that since all expenses are itemized, it would be easy to calculate the total amount used by public officials in their foreign travels.
But it’s not as simple as that.
There are many tricks in the bag that enterprising officials can use to justify going on foreign pleasure trips using public funds. This is perhaps one of the things that the President wants to eliminate. The most recent public official to be removed from office due to alleged excessive travel is Marcial Amaro III.
The erstwhile administrator of the Maritime Industry Authority followed Dangerous Drugs Board Secretary Dionisio Santiago, Development Academy of the Philippines president Elba Cross Jr. and Presidential Commission on Urban Poor chief Terry Ridon whose services were earlier terminated.
Amaro made six foreign trips in 2016 and 18 in 2017 which shows that his office must have a huge travel budget to make that many official foreign trips in one year. And yes, 18 trips does sound excessive.
Still, a formal Investigation should have been conducted to find out why Amaro made 18 official trips in just one year. With a formal investigation, it could have established whether Amaro used funds intended for other purposes to finance his many foreign trips to the detriment of the rank and file of the agency. An investigation could have also determined whether made-up invitations to the foreign travels were solicited by MARINA just so Amaro can have a reason to travel.
With the abrupt firing of the officials without the appearance of due process, we will never know whether the foreign trips were excessive, unnecessary or junkets. The way they were terminated may also not have been fair to them.
If corruption is the beef of the President here, it might be constructive to compare the amount spent for travel abroad to the alleged hundreds of millions being stolen by other corrupt public officials. The priority might be misplaced. In spite of the aversion of the President to foreign travels, in this day and age it is necessary for government officials to attend conferences abroad and establish contacts with their foreign counterparts who can support the country on certain vital diplomatic and economic positions that the country may take. If we do not do this, the country will be left behind in many ways.
Take the case of human rights. Currently, we are not the darling of the international community on this issue. It is therefore necessary that officials attend conferences abroad on the issue to solicit support and defend our position. Admittedly, a few of these foreign trips maybe in the borderline of what could be considered junkets but even travels of this nature will allow the public officials to learn a lot from the experience, something that cannot be done by just staying here and accessing the Internet.
I understand the need for avoiding unnecessary foreign travels to save on government funds but sometimes such trips do happen. Even the President himself has already traveled abroad 10 times in his first year in office and more trips are forthcoming to represent and work for the interest of the country and rightly so. This can also be said to lower ranked officials who travel abroad to also advance the interest of the country. Often, these officials are the people who will put into motion what the President signed with his counterparts from other countries at the policy level. Striking a balance to determine that only necessary trips are authorized and unnecessary trip disapproved is going to be always difficult and I suspect that this problem will continue into the future long after President Duterte is gone.