Dear Editor,
This week I heard some remarks made by the Minister of Justice in connection with job ethics and then the very next day I experienced not the same, but also, for lack of a better word, arbitrariness.
I went to pay a bill at the Receiver’s Office and had to join the line outside of the building in connection with social distancing. While standing out, two people came after me. One joined the line and the other one, yes, a gentleman with a foreign accent, went straight to the security officer. They were not talking secrets, so I gathered that the man’s business was two-fold of which one of them was to pay a bill. I heard clearly when the security officer told him that when he was finished at the first office that he should come back to him. In the meantime, the line was moving and I am now inside the building.
After sanitizing I joined the line inside the building on the Receiver’s side. While standing in line inside, I noticed that that gentleman with the foreign accent did not go back to the security officer, but he came straight towards the Receiver’s side of the building, walked by everybody standing in line and as he walked he slowed down by the first window, looked in and went and stood a little further.
A man and a woman were being attended to at that first window. The man looked around and asked which one, and then he went to the gentleman with the foreign accent and told him, “The lady inside called you.” When that man’s business was finished, the gentleman with the foreign accent was attended to before all of us who were standing in line inside before him.
I clocked him and it took him nine minutes to complete his business. I assumed he was paying for number plates because he mentioned 27 plates and he was wearing a shirt with the name of a car rental printed in green at the back.
While this was taking place three police officers dressed in uniform entered the building, one joined the line on the Receiver’s side, while the other two remained in the area of the entrance. It took about 15 more minutes before I got attended to so it took a while longer for the police officer to be attended to.
I was ready at 12:07pm. I went to one of the security officers and told him that in my days, police officers on duty would not have to wait in line. Someone would come to them and ask if they needed help and try their best to get them back on the road so that they could continue patrolling or whatever was necessary at that time. A lady who was standing close by said, “Not with some of those people working in there. I went to one of them with the acting governor to ask her to help him, she told me he had to stand in line just like the other people.”
There were a few more observations made in connection with the readiness of the employees by the Receiver’s, but I will not go any further with that. Even though I cannot swear that that gentleman with the foreign accent was given preferential treatment on this occasion, I have dealt with similar behavior in the past at the former Receiver’s Office. That person, also with a foreign accent, but from a different country, is well aware of it because at that time I confronted him about his blatant way of behaving in the face of others.
That police officer waited during the time that I was waiting and had to continue waiting behind the six other people between him and myself after I left.
I should not have to write a letter like this to you. This is not how it is done.
Russell A. Simmons
