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TIME TO INNOVATE!

Jan 11, 2012 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

There was a truck which broke down at a junction. This reduced traffic to one lane, and the line snaked for quite a few hundred metres which slowed progress considerably.
During that time that there was huge build-up of traffic, no one seemed to have given thought to the idea of calling the traffic department so that they could have come and ensured that the traffic moved more swiftly.
In most parts of the world, the traffic department would have been quickly on the spot and decided what needed to be done to get the traffic moving. A tow truck would have been summoned and the truck would have been towed away. We have a far way to go in this country in terms of modern standards and thus, the fact that we are not moving faster at modernizing the way we do things is in great measure, because we are not innovative enough.
Each morning there is a long line of persons outside the passport office. The passport authorities can easily do an estimate as to just how many of these persons actually travel. It is believed that only a small percentage of those that apply for passports actually end up using them within a few years. So large numbers of persons line up each day for passports which are hardly used, or so it is believed.
The life of a passport is fifteen years, but it has to be renewed every five years so that account can be taken of changing physical characteristics. You do not wish for a 20-year-old turning up at an immigration counter using a passport that has a photograph of a five-year-old.
So what is the solution? The solution is to allow for passports to be issued in the respective regions, but using a central database. The various terminals can be linked via a server to a central location. Thus, all the processing and checks would be done centrally, but the application can be collected in the various regions and the completed passports distributed there, thus saving a great deal of time for those persons, some of whom have to wake up as early as four in the morning to catch transportation to come to the city for a passport. This is totally unnecessary in this day and age. It is time for the passport office to be modernized.
It is also time for them to desist from this ridiculous idea of prohibiting persons from using their phones while sitting and waiting for the applications to be processed.
Persons have to be waiting in line for hours, all the while sitting and watching the process move slightly faster than molasses. This tends to make the time drag out longer.
There is no reason why during the time that the persons are waiting to hand in their documents or waiting for their photographs to be taken, that they should not be able to call their family or speak to their friends. What can be wrong with someone doing this while waiting? It is backward for rules to be implemented in public waiting areas which prohibit persons from using their cellular phones.
The next problem is the long lines to pay your utility bills. Why should any agency which is collecting money have persons lining up for a long time just to pay their bills? When you are collecting money, you want people to be in and out quickly because the faster the line moves, the more people can pay and the more persons that pay means higher revenue.
Yet very often you see a situation whereby at certain utilities there is not the full complement of cashiers. Yet other staff can be seen doing less important things. All the cashier cages should be manned so that customers do not have to wait a long time. This is what customer service is about: it is about making the customer feel good when he or she leaves the place. No one feels good when they have to stand in line for twenty or thirty minutes simply to pay a bill.
Automated machines now mean that persons do not have to line up for hours in the banks. Well, not really! There are still long lines in banks and since these are privately-run institutions, then one would expect that they would take action or reduce the long lines that can be presently found within their buildings. In short, they too need to innovate!

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