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Habitual Tardiness Is A Huge Enemy To Progress

I wrote the article on how habitual tardiness contributes to inefficiency, I would like to talk about how habitual tardiness is a real enemy to progress. It's annoying for any decent Pinoy to keep hearing, "But it's Filipino time! We're Filipinos and we must always be late!" type of excuse. No, being late is not an act of nationalism. It's just an act of stupidity. Do you want Pinoys to be always tagged with being late or do you want Pinoys to be tagged as punctual people? For the pseudo-nationalist, they'd probably choose the former than the latter.

Let's think of how habitual tardiness contributes to inefficiency. There's always a time table that the managers and executives follow to keep a company in check. This schedule is followed strictly based on optimization of operations within the organization. This schedule is done to make sure there will be less lag and more progress. But if the schedule is not followed and tardiness is tolerated then how can you expect the organization to be efficient? While it takes an expert in operations management to create an optimal schedule and to figure out the bottleneck constraints in the company but it doesn't take a genius to figure it out tardiness destroys both efficiency and effectiveness.

If the government offices don't value time then how can the business cycle improve? There's a lot of processes required in registering and continuing a business. Filipino government offices are known not to value time can be a constraint to foreign investments aside from economic protectionism. Who would want to invest in a country where getting a business permit, processing tax documents, getting stuff in and out the country and all necessary processes for international business take longer than usual? While there's always a line up and there's the value of waiting but dilly dallying is stupid. Like how stupid is it that you had to line up the whole morning all because the government employees showed up at 9:00 A.M. when they should have reported in when it was 8:00 A.M.? Now that's causing unnecessary delays isn't it?

What can be done right now is to enforce timeliness in the government office. It's time to fire those who are habitually late. Get rid of the mentality that if you want to work easy then work in the government office mentality. If government offices value punctuality and efficiency then no one getting fired for incompetence from any private owned businesses (whether Pinoy owned or foreign owned) would think about going to work at the government office. That way, we can avoid the ugly picture of Philippine government offices as the "safe haven" for habitually tardy Pinoys. The banner might e st written as "PINOY AKO AT ON TIME AKO! ANG FILIPINO TIME AY PAGIGING ON TIME! ANG PAGIGING LATE AY PAGIGING LATE!"

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