WAS IT an alibi or just plain laziness?
Last March 21, I applied for a certificate of candidacy for graduation (CCG) at the Registrar’s Office (RO). I needed the certificate for application in a Manila law school.
After filling out an application form, clearing my accounts at the Accounting division, and then paying the necessary fees for the certification, I lined up at the Arts and Letters (Artlets) window (window no. 5) at the RO to return my application.
When my turn came, the female employee behind the window told me to return on April 1 and instead apply for a certificate of graduation (COG) because the RO is no longer entertaining applications for CCG since our graduation wass only a week away—March 28.
I returned on April 2 to apply for a COG. However, to my surprise, the certificates would not yet be available until April 21.
At that point I was already furious. I was already pleading my case with the employee, saying that I needed the certification badly because I would surely miss the law school’s deadline for application if the COG would be released on the 21st. But she only said my predicament was similar to that of many others.
Her feeble argument did not deter me from getting the certificate.
The following day, I returned to the RO armed with a letter to UST Registrar Rodolfo Clavio asking if I could be given a special consideration. The employee who received my letter told me, again to my surprise, that I should have been given a CCG because I applied a week before my graduation.
The same employee asked me to recount what happened last March 21. She then said that I should have returned to Window 1 because that is where applications are processed. She added that the staff that usually processed them were busy due to the graduation days.
Fifteen minutes later, I was given a CCG.
I don’t know what’s wrong with the RO. I know most of the employees there have been with that office for several years—I have been seeing the same faces since I entered in the University in 1999—which makes it inconceivable for such miscommunication to still exist.
Moreover, graduation is a yearly event. Given their annual brush with it, employees at the RO should know how to deal with requests for CCGs and COGs. Such documents are clearly the most sought after, together with the temporary transcript of records. After all, every applicant gets the same CCG—a piece of paper containing less than 50 words and an authorized signature.
Why doesn’t the RO create a template for the certificates and just change the names and courses so that when a student applies for one, it can be had at once? That’s what computers are for.
On another note, there is another irritating trait at the RO. More often than not, students wait for eternity before they are attended to. I experience this almost everytime I need something from the RO. Most of the time, I stand in front of the Artlets window and wait there for a few minutes before the employee assigned to it attends to me.
The concerned employee has a lot of work to do, they say. That is not a reason. I suppose it would not take an employee even a minute to get my application and give me instructions regarding the next step.
I hope the Center for Human Resource Development takes note of employees who are not worth their salaries. I don’t want to waste my parents’ hard-earned money on such lousy customer service.
