The Anti-Red Tape Authority (ARTA) signed a memorandum of agreement on Monday morning with SM Supermalls to launch a public assistance desk in SM Manila.
During the signing of the pact on Monday morning Senior Vice President for SM Supermalls Bien C. Mateo said that SM Manila has been chosen as the location of the first ARTA Action Center.
“We always endeavor to better serve our customers, including our members. We believe that giving them access to improve an efficient process doing business would help them bounce back stronger and we want them to be more competitive as we enable them to grow their business in our environment,” Mateo said.
“We want to help them in their post-pandemic journey to recovery and through eliminating excessive bureaucracy,” he added.
Mateo expressed gratitude over ARTA’s effort in providing better government services to the people and to every aspiring business owner by easing the process of doing business in the country.
Just last week, the anti-red tape watchdog officially launched e-ARTA Complaints Management System, the first of its kind in the Philippine government.
The launch of the said on-line platform was the agency’s response to the call of President Duterte to government agencies to digitize their services to make it more accessible and convenient to the public.
Through the on-line platform, ordinary citizens can file complaints before ARTA. It features an electronic ticketing system, paperless complaint filing, and cloud storage for back up, and SMS notification for complaints.
On Monday, ARTA signed an agreement in partnership with SM Supermalls to launch a public assistance desk in SM City Manila, which is a hybrid version of the agency’s way of efficiently handling complaints to minimize bureaucracy and red tape.
ARTA Undersecretary Carlos F. Quita highlighted the difference between the e-ARTA CMS launched last week and the ARTA Action Center launched in SM Manila.
The former is purely online and thus can be easily accessed through a mobile phone. On the other hand, the ARTA Action Center is a combination of online and in-person assistance desk located at the Government Service Express of SM Manila beside government agencies and offices such as the Land Transportation Office and Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority.