Yesterday morning, I drove to the new building of our MDBG to get copy Assessment bills so that I could pay them. These bills used to be sent, sometimes even duplicated, but this year I was not the only one who did not receive them.
I was directed to the 'Penilaian' (Valuation) office at the 'hujung' (end). The design of the office building is such that to get to this office from the lobby, one has to walk left and turn sharp right to get to it. This reminds me of the usual 'mistake' of other places where even a designated walkway is not what the public would like, and you can see people walking across grass or flowerbed. Anyway, there were 5 people waiting and when I counted minutes later, there were 10 of us. It was not meant to accommodate crowd and there was no order in 'first come, first served' because of the unexpectedness. One of the two ladies felt the pressure and commented to the other that the staff at the other end conveniently directed them there. But I could see that this was the only place with printers ready to print bills, unless the enquiry counter has similar facility.
The problem of not receiving bills seems unlikely to be due to poor delivery by Post Office. I got the impression that Majlis tried to save postage (since the rate increased) or even preferred to collect additional revenue by way of penalties!
At the payment counter, my queue number put me 20 behind the current number. Initially, there was only 1 out of 4 counters manned. Slowly, the manned counters increased to 3 or 4. At the Penilaian office, I could read the first two of their Motto: Mudah (Convenient), Cepat (Fast) and another which I could not read. But there was no sense of urgency and I did not wish to press one of the buttons (from 1 to 5) to give my rating at the payment counter. It took me almost one hour to pay my assessment bills (because no bills received) which normally takes a few minutes depending on crowd. Bearing in mind it was 2 weeks before dateline, I can imagine the crowd getting bigger nearer the date. As far as I am concerned, Majlis failed to live up to the first two of their motto.
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