Not All Government Departments Are Created Equal

Farrel — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 13:29:00 -0500

It’s a bit of a sad comment on government beauracracy when the most pleasurable department to deal with is SARS – the taxman. Today I handed in my income tax forms (which are due in 2 days) and thinking I would be standing in massive queues with the other sleepyheads who suddenly realised the 14th of July is five days away, not 3 weeks away.

Luckily when I arrived at the SARS office, SARS had set up a marquee outside fully staffed with clerks (I counted 10) processing people’s forms and giving out receipts, so there was a 20 second wait before I was served And if you didn’t want to hang around for a receipt they had people standing in the road with signs round their necks that read “Tax Form Dropoff” who were collecting forms from passing motorists who just stuck their brown envelope out the window. Now that’s service.

Contrast that to my trip to the traffic department two months ago which had 2 tellers out of the 8 windows open, and took 2 hours to process 20 people.

Politics.za: Not All Government Departments Are Created Equal

Not All Government Departments Are Created Equal