The Presidential Communications Operations Office is again in the news, not for some announcement it has delivered on behalf of the President but for yet another blunder.
In its Facebook page the PCOO posted a photo of President Duterte meeting with outgoing Norwegian Ambassador to the Philippines Erik Forner.
Unfortunately, Forner was identified as “the representative of Norwegia.”
The error has since been corrected, but not before social media users were able to grab screen shots, repost the wrong reference, and make memes and jokes out of it and make “Norwegia” a trending topic on Twitter.
It’s hilarious, actually, and might be dismissed as another typographical error on the part of the agency. Who, after all, does not make mistakes?
The problem is that it does not appear to be a typo, as Undersecretary Lorraine Badoy insists. Norwsy could be a typo, or Norwey, or Norwqy. But no—the person who made the post obviously believed Norwegia was a country and took the trouble of typing additional letters to show it.
The bigger problem is that the agency could not be counted on to at least employ a second pair of eyes to look over what its people post, much less hire employees who know the actual countries of the world.
What rankles is that the PCOO supposedly enjoys a huge budget of P1.3 billion this year, a 4.4-percent increase from last year’s allocation, even as Badoy asserts, and arrogantly, that her agency has the smallest budget in government.
That is hardly the point, because what this points to is a culture of sloppiness and poor work ethic at the agency. This is not the first time this has happened. The Philippine News Agency, which is under PCOO, once used the logo of a pineapple firm to refer to the Department of Labor and Employment. No less than the PCOO’s assistant secretary believed Mayon Volcano was in Naga City, and has posted numerous misleading photos and statements online.
Mistakes are inevitable, of course, but if the lead communication agency of the government makes one embarrassing mistake after another, especially on matters on which it should know better, then that speaks volumes of the way these public servants regard their work. The haughty, unapologetic attitude does not help in sending the message that they acknowledge their mistakes and commit to do better.
Excellence is a way of life. It is measured not only by milestones achieved but by the manner in which one approaches the consistent challenge of turning in good work, day after day.