The National Meat Inspection Service (NMIS) will do away with the manual collection of fees for its services next year and replace it with an online payment system to cut red tape and avoid corruption.
NMIS Executive Director Ernesto S. Gonzales announced on Tuesday that the agency would implement an electronic payment system (EPS), which would allow the NMIS to shift to online banking.
“The NMIS is implementing an e-payment system where the client does not need to personally come to its offices anymore, both in the central and in regional offices, to pay any fee for its services,” Gonzales said.
“This means that not only there will be less time spent in paying whatever fees for NMIS services but also to minimize graft and corruption by limiting the face-to-face transaction between the NMIS personnel and its client,” he added.
Gonzales said the EPS will be rolled out in January 2018. With the EPS, meat establishments will just have to deposit their payment or fees to the LandBank account of the NMIS.
At present, NMIS collection officers visit each meat establishment to receive the payment for the services rendered by the attached agency of the Department of Agriculture.
“We are removing the power to collect to our inspection officers because they are prone to temptations. In the past there has been history wherein there were inspectors who were involved in bribery,” Gonzales said. “So, in order to clean those ranks, we have to implement this new payment system.”
The EPS will cover the following NMIS services: ante and post-mortem fee, licensing fee, laboratory fees, GMP/HACCP (Good Manufacturing Practices/Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points) certification fee and imported meat inspection fee, among others.
“The development of electronic payment system was in compliance with the e-commerce law, which mandates the government to have the capability to do e-commerce, one of which is the shift of payment to electronic system,” Gonzales said. The NMIS is the country’s sole national controlling authority on all matters pertaining to meat inspection and hygiene.