Imbecility is the word..

Two days ago, over an afternoon coffee, we sat down around the dinner table.

DH and I listened to few interesting stories that Z had for us to listen to regarding his brief holiday. Apart from stories regarding M'sian weather, food, traffic, etc, we finally had the opportunity to listen to this rather true, ironic and funny story.

It was a story regarding income tax, to be precise, the L-H-D-N people. I have not been working in Malaysia myself so I'll try to convey the story as close as to my possible understanding, so if I get certain hard facts wrong pertaining tax routine back home, I do apologise.

Ok it goes this way.

An elderly lady had been receiving letter upon letter chasing for payments from the income tax people (adressed to her husband who had long passed away) . Irritatingly but politely of course, this elderly lady acknowledged them that her husband had passed away years ago and pointed out that the claim over payment is ridiculous.

Yes, you may shake your head in disbelief, the letters kept coming and every time in response, the poor lady never missed telling them in writing or by phone that her husband is no longer to the existence of this world. But all were to no avail. Each year, same letter arrived asking for payments. Finally ( yes, after receiving yet another most recent of similar letter ) she thought that she had had enough and knew that it's time to call for desperate measures. Exasperated by it all, she wrote a 'nice' letter (to the L-H-D-N) which read something* like this ...



" Jikalau pihak L-H-D-N masih mahu menghantar surat tuntut bayaran daripada suami saya yang bernama **** (yang telah pun meninggal dunia 5 tahun yg lalu) pada masa hadapan, usah alamatkan ke alamat ini tetapi silalah alamatkan kepada:-

Arwah ****(suami saya)
Tanah Wakaf Perkuburan *****
*****, Melaka

Segala surat-menyurat di alamat ini tidak akan dilayan.

Sekian Terima Kasih"




I laughed hard listening to this story but my greateast sympathy is to the poor lady.

Talking about government bodies...
Who do we blame? Would you blame the attitude called ignorance?
Or simply conclude total inefficiency? Or imbecility?
Or all of them?

Digest.

Have a nice day..ahead!

*to my best attempt, the content of the letter is 95%, a re-qoute from Z's story and 5% is to my best exploitation in order to convey the story as placid as possible.