A bungling bureaucracy

For years, I have had real estate business dealings with National Housing Trust (NHT) and have often had occasion to say it is one of the most efficient government organisations that I have ever encountered.

Not anymore however, for my recent experience indicates that the Trust has now become a bungling bureaucracy.

In March this year, I was sent a letter inviting me to pay off my mortgage and when I saw how attractive the savings would be, jumped to do so. This was after calling to find out what the discharge fees etc would be. I then paid the sum in full only to get a letter dated 6 th April 2010 informing me that what I had paid earlier was insufficient to close the deal as a balance of $2198.44 remained.

After complaining that I had received an earlier sum and paying it and getting the usual apology, I asked if this new sum could be paid electronically and was told I would have to come in. So I went in and as is customary when one has a bill to pay, I headed to the cashier and got my receipt after being told the process takes approximately six weeks to complete. This was the 7th May, 2010.

I basically forgot about the whole thing until running into the receipt four months later and remembering that they had not returned the security. I called them only to hear that a letter had been sent to me in September (which I am yet to receive) that I still owed the balance.

When I gave the receipt number to the lady in the Loan Management Department, she said I should bring in my receipt as they had no record of it.

What I learnt on my visit to the NHT the next day, left me speechless for I was then told that the reason why they had no record of the payment was because I had not advised the Loan Management Department that the money had been paid!

When I asked in amazement if the cashier does not send an advice to the relevant departments when payment is made, I was told no for the borrower needs to go to Customer service before making payments, for them to start the paperwork. When I showed her the letter I had received which had no such instructions and pointed out that the cashier did not say that the receipt should have been taken to another department, a sheepish apology was made. The fact is however, it is not the poor clerk who dealt with me who was at fault but the super bureaucrat who devised this rigmarole in this the electronic age 2010!

Can you imagine if this bureaucrat worked at the Collector of Taxes? What would happen is that ticketed persons, after paying the fine,would have to take their receipt to the Police Traffic Department downtowwn, to show they had paid the fine! Worse, if one was paying property tax one would have to drive to the relevant Parish Council to show that the taxes had been paid! My God, what a thought!

I am absolutely amazed that someone in management at the NHT could have devised such a paper pushing bureaucratic system! Is this how they create "jobs for the boys" .....by setting up departments all over the place for customers to trudge to?

All I can say is that if this was a private company, whoever designed this system would have been retired in the public interest and put on a pension long before computers were invented!