I have not learned my lessons

A national government agency has been bugging me.

The story: I have a project with them and it took them several months for the payments to be released so I insisted that I be paid because I was already languishing in poverty. I have no other means of income, so these projects were the ones keeping me sane.

I asked my friends in that office to help me out. After several pleadings and stories of abject need, I was paid through another fund source. I told them we would be having problems when the real check in my name would come because I could not issue a double receipt. They agreed that I issue a receipt when the check comes in and return them the payments.

After months of waiting the check came. I put it in my account and took weeks of verification before I could withdraw the cash. Talk about government bureaucracy. They are lying about those ads telling us there are no more red tapes.

Sigh.

Well, I sent the money to a family member telling them to give it to that national agency. But my family may have also suffered some economic crash they took a part of the lump, without me knowing.

Now I could no longer pay the used money. That is why they have been bugging me. Their treasurer has been sending me messages since day one asking me to pay because they also need the money. Months have passed, and we switched positions.

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Another office of the provincial government of Bohol has not paid me for a project last July 2009. I designed several materials for a very (note the very) minimal price and until now, almost a year, they have not paid a single centavo. At all.

I was asked to submit my papers. I submitted them. After a leeway of months, they again asked me to submit another document since they said I had other obligations from the provincial government. Every time I go to their office, I have to sign something. No something came out from them. They are still asking me another document and I have stopped doing them.

Since they have another project for me (yeah, I am so dumb and dumber still) they asked another outside office (not a government office, mind you) to pay me in their behalf so I could work on another of their projects. That office gave me cash alright, but charged to me as cash advance. Now I owe money to that office too.

Isn’t it great?

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I was caught between bloating prices for government transactions and being the honest person I used to be. I know that several companies inflate their prices up to 35% when government agencies procure their services because of delayed payments disguised as government bureaucracy.

Some, if not most, resort to bribery so that payments would come out unexpectedly. Yes, those gallons of ice cream or a bilao of pansit you sent to a certain office so your papers can be fast tracked are pure bribery.

We have not changed at all. Don’t blame me.

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The staff of these offices have been “hurt” by the blog I wrote about them way back when they also delayed payments they owed me. Yes, these incidents were not the first.

Indeed, I am a fool. When you have no other means of income, even those you know would pay or not has to be accepted in the hope of seeing a bright future ahead.

I am a positive person. Now, blame me.