Mother of sick boy wins Mexico's red-tape contest

MEXICO CITY — To get life-saving medicine for her son, Cecilia Velazquez embarks each month on a bureaucratic odyssey. First, two government doctors have to sign off on the prescription. Next, four bureaucrats must stamp it. Last, she has to present it (in quadruplicate) to a hospital dispensary.

The process takes at least four days and sometimes as many as 15. Since her son has a hereditary immune-system deficiency that could make an infection fatal, she said she asked God to keep him well when he had to go without his medicine.

She once complained to the government agency that runs the hospital where her 7-year-old son, Diego Emilio, is treated for his illness. But the comptroller's office told her the procedure "just is that way."

On Thursday, Velazquez got the vindication she had been seeking: from the president of the country.

Velazquez won a government contest to identify Mexico's most useless red tape, and President Felipe Calderón was on hand to present her prize. Calderón, like presidents before him, has vowed to battle government inefficiency, which he sees as a serious drag on the economy.

The contest, organized by the government office that works to stop corruption and inefficiency, attracted 20,000 applications.

The layers of bureaucracy keep hundreds of thousands of people employed, but many Mexicans have lost their patience with red tape that can cause harm, keeping people from collecting pensions on time, for instance, or delaying the opening of a business.

Mexicans have learned to arm themselves for any government encounter. They turn up for even the simplest transactions with folders filled with years' worth of documents.Birth certificates have become so essential that some families order scores of them — what they hope will be a lifetime supply — as soon as their children are born.

But even intricate preparations are no guarantee against endless delays. Bureaucrats have been known to change the rules as they like or duck out for two-hour lunches despite long lines of people waiting to see them.

Some Mexicans respond by offering bribes, said Maria del Carmen Pardo, a professor of public administration at the Colegio de Mexico who was on the contest jury.

Two other residents won for offering examples of red tape in state and municipal bureaucracies: the time-consuming process of fixing errors in birth certificates and the rigors of getting a proof-of-residence document that is often needed to complete other government processes.

Velazquez won because of the seriousness of her problem and because of her common-sense solution. She suggested the government keep a database, allowing patients to get their medicine easily while making prescription abuse more difficult.

She won about $22,000, which she said would help pay for her son's treatment. She works part time and said she doubts she could find a full-time employer willing to let her go for days each month to navigate the bureaucracy. She also won a government promise to fix her bureaucratic problems. "We'll see," she said.