Careless bureaucrats to join in paper chase
All too often, citizens engaged in one of the many paper chases that are essential in their dealings with the public sector are forced back to square one after some or all of their documents are lost within the arcane workings of the state bureaucracy. Under a new presidential decree presented by the Interior Ministry yesterday, civil servants mishandling such files will be forced to notify the citizen involved of any document’s loss within 24 hours, and will then have to retrieve the mislaid papers themselves. Bureaucrats – including municipal officials – will be given 30 days’ grace to find the required documents, during which time any deadline the citizen initially faced will be suspended. The decree will come into effect within a month of its official publication in the Government Gazette.
