Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Typical Government Officer's Reply

"Smoking in Casinos. None the wiser about the rules" - was a forum writer second feedback to NEA whereby he directed his enquiry.

Basically it is a clear case of double standard by National Environment Agency (NEA) in implementing the No Smoking Act. Casino has been given the special privilege for their patrons to smoke indoors in air-condition environment which is not allow in all other buildings in Singapore.

NEA just don't have the gut to come right out to admit it, thus giving a confusing reply instead and hoping to get away with it.

Well, this is not surprising as it represents the typical reply from government ministries. They will normally beat around the bush with their dated English sentence construction, quoting you the rules which we can read for ourselves in the website,etc. Basically do everything in their capacity NOT to give you simple direct answer.

I often wonder if their standard answers are 'cut and paste' from their predecessor, pass down from one 'generation' to another. This could explain why it only serves to confuse and does not answer the question posed by the public.

From their reply one can even tell if the organisation is an ex-govt ministry which has been corporatised or privatised in recent years. This is because they still exhibit government officials mentallity. Take for example SingPost. They have been numerous feedback from the public regarding their staff delivering junk mails to HDB residents. There has been a costly mass exercise to upgrade HDB letter box previouly in order to prevent this. SingPost action counteracts the whole purpose of the letter box upgrade. But SingPost usual 'standard' reply to the public feedback on various occasions is, that those who do not want to receive junk mails can write to them. Sigh ....we need to write to them to request them to stop putting rubbish into our letter box! Is there any logic to this?

Another possible reason is they are doing everything within their power to avoid changes, even if their existing policies are illogical. Pointing it out to them is ...sigh -useless. They will just tell you it is their regulation.

No comments: