Page 18 - From Lines to Online: Automating Quezon City’s Business Permitting Process

QC WORKs: ONLINE OCCUPATIONAL PERMIT SYSTEM (OOPS)

Getting Occupational (Working) Permits is now faster and easier. It used to be such a burden to get this permit.
Every January, workers in Quezon City would line up as early as 4 a.m. at City Hall just to be ahead and to make
sure that they will be fortunate enough to beat the cut-off for the day.

Lining up is just the start of the process that often lasts a whole day. The process is very tedious – lining up to get
an order of payment, lining up to pay, lining up to have a photo taken, lining up again to receive the actual
occupational permit together with hundreds, sometimes hundreds of applicants cramped at the basement of
Civic Center Building A. A single paper would take a whole day to process, forcing the worker to miss his or her
work, and losing a day’s pay.

“More often than not, we would encounter angry or irate applicants, who are mostly daily wage earners who
need the Occupational Permit to have their employment contracts renewed or find a job,” said Mr. Africa, the
Acting Chief of the Occupational Permit Unit.

The hours of waiting for the permit to be released would sometimes stretch into the evening depending on the
speed of the network and the computers. Only 2 counters used to be available for processing an average of 500
applications per day.

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