The government sector

I just found out that women in the civil service will be given five years maternity leave. 5 years??? No joke maann..hahahah… that’s a bit over generoud if you ask me. If I were the moms, I don’t think I’d opt for the 5 years leave, furthermore it being an unpaid leave. What about those families who depend on two people to bring income? A bit unrealistic lah.

But, Pak Lah seems to think it’s ok. He promised that the Government will make sure that more workers will be employed if any department was affected by this exercise. Well…let’s see how that goes la kan?

Have you ever dealt with the government sector? No need to be anything major lah, it can even be as small as renewing your passport or making some applications. Well, back at the time when I was working for the school, I had to make loads and loads of phone calls to the education department. In the beginning, all my calls would either go unanswered, or was met with “Dia dalam meeting.”

Which got me to thinking, diorang ni semua 24 jam ke meeting? I grew more and more frustrated with each passing day as my own deadlines came near.

Then I saw the pattern.

If you want your calls to be answered, call them at 8am. Any time after 8.15am, they would have left for breakfast.

The next best time to call is at 10.30 to 11am. This is they’ve come back from breakfast and have pretty much settled the early morning chit-chat. You can forget about calling at 11.45 onwards, becuase they’re probably gearing up for lunch.

The rest of the day is quite useless as the people who answer the phone are not in the tip-top mood and they’re too busy dealing with other issues, and besides, the people you want to speak to would be “tengah meeting”.

4pm onwards is most likely tea-time and everyone’s at the cafeteria and at 4.45pm most of them would have started their very slow and leisurely walk towards the punch-card machine.

Haih. So I guess that’s why Pak Lah seems to not find much of an issue with a 5 year maternity leave. It’s just an extension of their super-slow orang-gomen culture.

The fiance is in the government judiciary sector. As strong and as ambitious as he is, I sure hope he does not fall to pressure to conform and become one of those slow-pokes, hehehehhe…