The journey to Paranaque was a long and tedious adventure. For the first time, we experience the challenge of commuting to Paranaque city with no intial inquiry of how to get there. We merely looked into maps and search possible routes on how to get there. Luckily, google maps was of great help and it has helped us to get to our destination. It was indeed a long and tiring journey but it was a worth while experience.

By the time we reach Paranaque City, we noticed that our travels took us approximately 4hrs, we traveled by rail way; we first used the LRT all the way to cubao, then we boarded the MRT and alighted at Magallanes station. Next we followed the highway and found a park beneath the said highway. After asking a few bystanders and guards, we finally saw the PNR station that we later on rode all the way to Bitucan. However, when we arrived at Bitucan station, we were under the impression that we were relatively close to Paranaque, however, we were wrong for wer still need to ride more than 2 tricycles to get to our destination. We where then advised by the people we were asking for direction that it would be more practical to take a cab. As a result, we took a grab to get there, then finally we arrived and entered the Paranaque City Hall with the hope of getting a chance to interview employees. Despite our long hours of travel, our interview only lasted more or less an hour. However, the information we received was worth the trip.

To say with all honestly, when we first arrived at the Paranaque City Hall, we were rather anxious of how will the people there treat us, especially when we were taking short clips and pictures of the City Hall. More importantly, we were even worried that they would not entertain us since we had no appointment whatsoever, despite our sending of letters via email, we received no response of any kind.

It is pleasing to know that the people working under BPLO were actually affable and approachable. We simply asked of them if we could conduct short interviews to know more of Paranaque City and their operations, after we have introduce ourselves. Interestingly, an employee immediately introduced us to one of the legal officers accommodated our request of an interview.

During the interview, there were so many interesting developments that led to the improvement of Paranaque City, under their specific office. I learned a lot during the interview but what really caught my attention was 3 topics.

1. The re-engineering of there phases of processing business permits. Initially, the process had 19 steps to undergo before the applicant receive their permits. However, it was later then collapsed into 5 then lastly into 3. The process was so efficient and effective that the 3 steps later gave more opportunities to business to apply for business permits etc.
2. The continues plan for development, the legal officer opened to us that they plan to recruit more personnel and expand the space of their office to provide an even larger scale service to the masses. There main concern is that from time to time, they lack the man power to accommodate more applicants simultaneously. Aside from the increase of space and man power, plans for easy access was also being formulated to address the concern of inaccessibility of those far from the City Hall.
3. The re engineering of Paranaque was actually inspired by the re engineering of Muntinlupa.

Overall, the trip was interesting and educational, we learned a lot on how to commute to Paranaque, and about the Paranaque City along with its development as a whole. As future leaders of this country, it would be of great help for us to be informed of such re-engineering and structuring that we may tap the potential of our country and build from there.

#tinola