by Sidney Sweeting, DDS

My office staff have spent the past two weeks trying to get someone on the telephone at BEC to let them know that the automated message we have been receiving for the past six weeks advising that our electricity will be disconnected if the bill is not paid,  is referring to an account that belongs to someone else. We finally reached someone this past week – a real live person. She must have finished reading the Punch, talking to her "sweetie" and having her breakfast a tad early. She informed us that the number they were calling once belonged to someone else. We informed her that we have had that number for 18 years. That however, does not surprise us. The number we have at home is still listed as "The Men’s Shop".(Does anyone remember that store, which closed about 24 years ago?) Does anyone wonder why our Corporations need to be privatized?

A trip was made to the post office this afternoon to pay an electricity bill only to learn that the lower section where the mail is sorted and bills can be paid was once again closed at 1:00 pm. Could that explain why utility bills are late and why we received some important mail from an oral surgeon in Miami on September 10th which had been mailed on July 7th (this year).

My wife and I have some visitors this week from Texas and they questioned why the Immigration officer at the airport was so abrupt with them. I described the one I had three weeks prior who was not only curt, she was oviously "vex" about something. It was not the same one so we guessed that they are now hired on the basis of how high they rate on the "sour attitude" index.

I suspect that the ones who don’t quite make the grade for Immigration are given a chance at the office of the Regisrar of Births and Deaths. They are slightly more pleasant but they are slow to react and have to be asked to serve a customer. Perhaps they have not quite grasped the idea that they are placed there for that purpose.

These same visitors commented after their drive through town that they found a traffic light that was not working. They wondered why we found that amusing and we explained that in Nassau we are surprised when we find one working. We later showed them the two on Mackey Street and Rosetta that have not worked for years.

It would be almost impossible to find any local person who does not have one or more complaints about one or more of the civil service departments which has left them totally frustrated and we have to agree that it has never been as bad as it is now. One of the major complaints is the inability to get someone on the telephone. Most of the time we are diverted to a number with a voice message "I am not at my desk…" or "sorry the voice mail is full". The latter one sure speaks volumes.

The question we are all asking is "Does anyone in Government know about all these problems". If so, are there any plans to make everyone in the civil service accountable, including the executives?