Take a simple thing such as renewing your driving licence a month before it expires. What should be a relatively easy process becomes a comedy of errors. For a start the norm is to book a day off work…..you never know your luck it could be one hour or seven (never more than that as they chuck you out of the building – even if you’re still in line – and beetle off home).
SEE ALSO: Driver’s licences and renewals still face backlog
Armed to the teeth with certified copies of documents you head on out to stand in a queue that is already 20 people deep at 7.30 in the morning. By the time the office opens there are 60 people or more, all with the same thing on their mind – get in, get served, get out. Chaos ensues and three half-hour tea breaks and an hour lunch break later, you are still no further ahead barring a chair or two if you are lucky.
When you do eventually make it to the counter, not forgetting the eye testing fiasco where the machine is rattled, prodded and poked to make it work, insult is added to injury. A surly employee tells you in addition to paying for the renewal of your licence you have to fork out an additional amount for a temporary licence as the chances of your new driving licence making it back to you on time is debatable as the government printing press is down or the employees are on strike….take your pick.
Bunch Home Affairs, the Department of Labour and all those other apathetic government departments that we are forced to frequent together and your annual leave and sanity starts taking a beating. Bitching to family and friends doesn’t help as they are all in the same boat too.
So you take to social media to vent your frustration and achieve ….. well, nothing. That’s right folks absolutely nothing as no amount of complaining or drawing up of petitions achieves anything tangible except for other folk putting their two cents worth in on the subject on social media and ultimately it just blows over without much change.
Unfortunately, we are at the mercy of state-owned enterprises and although I have occasionally dabbled with the idea of taking to toyi-toying, knowing my luck, however, I would end up in that overcrowded, criminally infested holding cell at our local police station. Do I have the answer….no I don’t, but I live in eternal hope.
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