complaints on government agencies

public complaints bureau director, datuk mahadi arshad said that the bulk of complaints received by his bureau. relate to delay in rendering services and inaction by government servants. and he added that to date, the bureau had received 2,773 complaints so far and over 50% of these complaints were made because of those two reasons (delay and inaction).

and do you know which department top the list of complaints? none other than the home ministry! ahh, right the home ministry… where the deputy hole ministry chor (no typo… hole, you see because he has a hole in his head) insisted on banning books on ghosts and supernatural. next on line are the prime minister’s department, finance ministry and the energy, communications and multimedia ministry.

on the delay of rendering services, mahadi gave the excuses that it could be due to the fact that a certain application would have to be vetted by several agencies, for example application for land would involve up to 10 agencies.

yeah this may be true… it involves several agencies… but if each agency were to efficiently do thier work without dilly dally, with all agencies combined together, the delay won’t be long! but with all the complaints, it looks like each of the involved agencies were taking their own sweet time.

i used to work in an architect’s firm before and we deal with a lot of government agencies. i remember the frustrations my boss had to undergo waiting for applications (of plans) to be approved.

btw, to sidetrack a little, during my stint in the architect’s firm, in dealing with the different government agencies through phone, i found that the most polite and efficient was the fire department. they had the best phone manners!

coming back to the complaints bureau, mahadi said that they would be launching a ‘towards minimum number of complaints’ campaign starting next year to improve the delivery system among government staff, particularly those in the frontline agencies like the road transport, immigration and national registration departments.”

“We will use this campaign to disseminate information to all departments on the necessity to improve efficiency.” he said.

hmm… i wonder how will just disseminating information spur the staff into improving efficiency? by ‘information’ what did he mean? distributing colourful flyers that scream “buck up!”? or organising talks/seminars?

do you have any experience to share on your complaints of government agencies? or maybe you’d rather prefer to just complain and bash ’em right here! 🙂

btw, if you go to bernama website there is a poll that read:

the efficiency of a government department lies mainly in:

* an efficient leadership.
* the staffs own efforts and initiatives
* the cooperation and feedbacks from the public

which will you pick? all? neither?