EDITOR – My girlfriend and I were sitting at the Bedfordview licence office, trying to collect a NATIS [National Traffic Information System]document.
We have been waiting for several weeks.
We came in to collect the document on February 12 following a phone call on February 11, telling us to come and collect this document.
They told us that they are offline and we should come back the following day.
We left as we thought to ourselves that these things do happen.
Also read: Licensing Department troubles
One would expect a government office to have a backup power supply.
It’s not like we taxpayers don’t pay some of the highest effective tax rates in the world.
We arrived back on February 13 and all of a sudden at around 1.10pm, after we’d been waiting for nearly an hour, the gentleman dealing with NATIS document closed his window and went off to lunch.
How are we supposed to juggle our jobs, lunchtime, and collecting documents that have sometimes taken weeks, and in some cases, months to arrive, when public servants take lunch at the exact time most of us only have available to visit?
There were also three women sitting at the bulk counter doing absolutely nothing work-related because they apparently didn’t have any bulk work to do, while on the counter next door to them this gentleman closed his counter and went off for lunch.
Also read: Licence renewals – what you need
They don’t work anywhere near the hours I personally put in without taking lunch every day, but yet at the only time most people who work for a boss can actually get to their offices for documentation which the organisation they work for government requires from us (the ratepayers and taxpayers of this country), they insist on taking a break.
Granted, the gentleman in question was only gone for about 35 or 40 minutes – but it is unacceptable in the first place to have only two windows out of five or six open to assist the public, while three women sit in full view of the public doing nothing but gossiping in a cubicle assigned for processing bulk documentation; and then in the second place, to close one of those two open windows down for over half an hour so that the gentleman can go off to lunch.
Is this actually considered to be service delivery?
What kind of arrogance towards the hard-pressed tax-payer – who increasingly grudgingly pays their not-inconsiderable salaries – is this exactly?
I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that, if I behaved like that in my job, I would be unemployed in very short order.
And that I would, without hesitation, get rid of any of my staff who displayed the same lack of work ethic and service orientation.
Nom de plume.
Editor’s comment: A request for comment was sent to the City of Ekurhuleni on February 18.
A comment was requested by February 20 at 4pm.
By the time of going to print, no comment was received.
