My Bubble: What's With These People?!!!

They asked us to fulfill our responsibilities as a responsible citizen so that they can take money away from us. Then plastered all over their offices is their slogan to provide their service with a smile.

Good for them but they just needed a few bad old apples to really spoil their lot and their long-running effort to provide a better delivery system!

Lo kong and I went to the Income Tax Department yesterday morning to submit the CKHT form for the purchase of a small office lot. It was supposedly a very simple thing to do ... submitting a set of completed forms to fulfill our responsibility. We could have allowed our lawyer to do it on our behalf but why pay an exhorbitant amount (RM400) for such a simple task which she probably wouldn't incur any costs anyway (you see, there's this thing call runners and bulk submissions). Even after all the wild goose chase we went through, it still didn't cost us any more than RM40! Maybe it is a slight loss of our time but why should we condone such 'daylight robbery' if we can put up with a little hardship to do it for ourselves.

Anyway, back to the civil servants helming the counters at the Income Tax Department. First of all, our lawyer (mind you, we paid her for all her services) failed to let us know that the forms can only be submitted at the Jalan Duta office (to spite us? your guess is as good as mine). We went to the Income Tax Shah Alam office since it is so much nearer to home, queue for almost an hour only to be told that we were at the wrong office. The counter officer verified the documents and politely told us that it should be submitted to their office at Block 11 in Jalan Duta.

By the time we rush to the other location, it was already 5 minutes to 12 and we crossed our fingers hoping the counter will remain open throughout lunch-time. It did and there was only one officer on duty with only one customer who's on his way out. Upon hearing the word 'CKHT' and without verifying our forms, she immediately direct us to Block 8A which by then is already closed for lunch. We had to hang around for almost an hour before being allowed into that office. The 2 counter staff had the typical infamous attitude tagged on the public services. There were only one other customer waiting there and they still asked us to wait while they go about chit-chatting between them (I understand Malay very well and by the way, haven't you two gossiped enough over lunch-break?). No queue numbers were in practice and when more people started coming in, they were not happy when lo kong told them we only wanted to submit our CKHT forms. One of them finally checked our forms and rudely told us to submit at Block 11. When lo kong informed them that we were in fact been instructed to submit to them by the former counter, they became agitated and defensive. What's with these people?!!!

Hello! We are the victims of your poor delivery system and you are getting agitated before we do ... what the heck!!! Don't they realised we are the tax-payers paying their salaries?!

With a whole lot of patience, we finally managed to submit the documents to a different counter in Block 11 and thank the Lord, the lady officer who attended to us was polite and helpful. Perseverance finally paid off!

Just a note to the people who are afraid to be put through such poor delivery by the public servants, there are calculative lawyers like mine who will not hesitate to charge you unreasonably while the Government uses tax-payers' money to keep these bad apples in employment.

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