Rent paying at the Council...

Our local Council is so steeped in strange ways, that instead of 'serving' the public, they end up doing just the opposite.

As it is, the whole Council is questionable in the extreme, in the way it works (if it at all, does), most of their so-called employees are semi- and illiterate or give one the impression that they are by their moronic behaviour.

Take the example of what I encountered, yesterday afternoon at about 3.30 pm at the Cashiers Hall where we pay the rent among other payments. There's total chaos, first. Then, everytime I have the misfortune of going to pay my rent, I encounter different rules. When I question them, I'm either given a bored blank look with no enlightenment or, like yesterday, I was told that they are following procedures....! Whatever that means.

Now, to enumerate the many irritating and harassment issues regarding this horrible Council:

1. If, they are computerized, what is the need for presenting the last receipt of payment for the cashier to make out another receipt for the current payment that one is making? Don't they have their records on their computers?

2. Yesterday, I was told to go to the Housing and Social Services office which is in another building, and get and fill a form from there before paying my rent. What is all this about? And since I, personally have many disability issues (I suffer from MS), and am currently suffering from torn ligaments of my foot, I do not find it at all easy to walk around let alone climb staircases since I already have to contend with my own. Nobody, at the Council, including the so-called Customer Relations Desk, seems to have been sensitized about such people. They just shuttle you from one place to another and find it highly amusing, too.

3. And when one has eventually paid this rent, we are then supposed to go all the way across town to their Tudor office to show this receipt/s to their lolling employees there to supposedly 'balance' their ledger books. Has it escaped our Council and the Ministry of Local Govt., that we live in the 21st Century not the 19th and since they have computers, these can do all of this without them harassing their tenants?

4. Then, they have a 'rule' that if a payment of 5000/- or above is going to be made, then, only a Banker's Cheque is acceptable. Why? Since this useless Council has increased the rent of our flats without following the tenant/landlord agreement of giving us one month's notice, they should also do something about this 'rule'. As they use the excuse of inflation for having hiked our rents by over 100%, shouldn't they also increase the 5000/- requirement?

5. When you consider all the above inconveniences, etc., short of going to pay the rent in person, it would be very difficult to delegate somebody else to go and pay the rent on one's behalf.

6. So, while our Council supposedly follows never ending and irritating 'procedures', they are also harassing the people they are purportedly there to 'serve'!

When is this ever going to end?