Winner Announced In Mexico’s “Most Useless Paperwork” Competition

After Mexican president Felipe Calderón announced a competition to find the “Most Useless” piece of government paperwork, the nominations poured in by the thousands - but in the end, only three winners were picked on the federal, state and municipal level. The top winner, Cecilia Deyanira Velazquez, won $22,000 for having to stand in lines for at least four days every month to get medicine for her son’s immune disorder. Ms. Velazquez says that it can sometimes take as many as fifteen days to get the medicine:

“This procedure goes through eight hands, between stamps, authorizations, copies. But they say that’s the way it is, and that there is no other option.”

Luckily, Ms. Velazquez has a brilliant solution:

Have the Social Security offices create a computer database of patients’ prescriptions, so they only need to enter the information once. Genius. What were they doing before, we wonder? Scratching out prescriptions on papyrus scrolls and sending mail via messenger pigeon? Mexican bureaucracy, meet Computer. We’re sure you’ll be great friends.

On the state level, Ms. Ana Maria Calvo won for her tragic tale of attempting to get a correction made to her husband’s birth certificate. Ms. Calvo said she had been fighting to get a simple correction made, “Antonio” to “Juan Antonio,” but officials said she would have to get a notarized birth certificate (from Spain, where her husband was born) and then take her problem to the courts. When at one point she burst into tears out of frustration from being shuffled from line to line, the official at the end of that line told her:

“You know what, I don’t help crying women. Go see if my colleague will help you.”

Lovely. Calderón said the point of the competition was not to punish officials but to point out where the grossest inefficiencies were, so that they could begin to address them. His goal is to eliminate 1,200 of the 4,2000 forms used in routine government tasks.

In the meantime, may we suggest that Ms. Velazquez and Ms. Calvo use their prize money to buy themselves a nice soothing cup of tea- and then a thug to beat the crap out of the next guy that “doesn’t help crying women.”

Mother of sick boy wins Mexico’s red-tape contest [Seattle Times]

Mexico awards cash for worst gov’t red-tape sagas [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]