Lawyers not always suited to head ‘technical agencies’ – Grace Poe

Sen. Grace Poe (File photo from the Senate Public Relations and Information Bureau)

MANILA, Philippines — The government should not always put lawyers as the heads of “technical agencies” as they might not understand the technical aspects of their job, Sen. Grace Poe said on Saturday in an interview with AM radio station DWIZ.

She suggested that the people posted in such agencies should have the “competence” in the work of those agencies. She noted as an example Secretary Ivan Uy of the Department of Information and Communications Technology, who she said could understand source codes.

Poe, who chairs the Senate Committee on Public Services, made the remark in connection with her panel’s hearing last Thursday on the text scams pestering millions of phone users.

At that hearing, the chief of the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC), Gamaliel Cordoba, who is a lawyer, earned the Poe’s ire for forgetting about his agency’s dedicated complaint hotline for text fraud.

“So, of course, next time, if people are posted in technical agencies, at least we would know that they have the capability, the competence,” Poe explained, speaking in a mix of Filipino and English.

“I hope we should not always post lawyers. Because if we only post lawyers, they might not be able to understand the technical aspects of their work,” she added.

Poe said that she did not know what the NTC was doing to address these text scams.

“They are quick to react to certain things, like the oppression of others’ franchises, but when it comes to the needs of subscribers,  our countrymen, they don’t seem to care,” she said.

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