Life In A Jam-packed Government Office

This is a  personal observations of activities inside a crammed government office in an ordinary working day.

I have to submit a filled up form needed to update my personal records in a specific government office.  This is to facilitate the verification process relating to inquiry on my benefit claims with the said office.  This action was instigated when an ATM card issued under my account for this purpose had been cancelled.  

And this is what transpired in the process.

Day 1 – I assessed what would be the best  initial step to do, to inquire from the bank the reason behind the cancellation of my card or check with the government office first.  I opted for the latter hence, I proceeded to the concerned government  office to check why.  I  discussed  with the employee at the reception desk  the nature of my concern.  He explained that there is no need to check with the bank as instruction came from their office to suspend bank transactions in line with their records updating process. He then gave me a form to fill up and advised me to return next day as they had already issued sufficient numbers to clients who could be served for the day.

Day 2 – When I came back the following day the office is already overflowing with people.  I proceeded to the reception to ask for a number but when he checked my filled up form he instructed me to attached  a back to back photocopy of two valid Identification Cards which at the moment I had none.  My initial reaction was  to ask why this was not advised to me yesterday when I was given the form. This should have saved me time and effort  for I should have brought these requirements had I been told about it  but decided  to keep mum and left to procure these additional requirement.  It is good that I have my ID’s in my wallet and it took me almost thirty minutes to come back. This time I was given number 165 and I joined the queue of people waiting to be attended to.  I reported back at about ten thirty AM and was able to took my turn at about past two o clock PM.  That is almost four hours of waiting only to be told that there is nothing to be updated in my records as everything is in order.  The employee in charge then instructed me to check with the bank as there is no problem with my account.  Honestly I really don’t know what I had felt at that precise moment and since there is no more reason to further waste my time there I went to the bank to check.  It turned out that the bank had somewhat misclassified my account and they immediately reactivated it.

On the course of the waiting period in this office these are what I have observed:

• Insufficient staff to attend to members’ needs.  Additional staff would have made processing of transactions faster and thus minimise cases of people coming back the following day due to  lack of staff to serve them for the day.
• Some members upon submission of their documents were instructed to come back again due to incompleteness of requirements.  This could be minimized or avoided by a detailed checklist attached to every form to guide applicants/members on the needed requirements.

To sum up, I think it would be beneficial both to the employees and clients if our government offices would speed up the processing of documents by studying closely the area that needs to be improved.   Conducting an observations based on the “clients point of view”  on their existing policies and procedures would help them  identify bleak areas  that will enable them to implement measures and thus enhance the quality of their service.