On June 3, while anxiously trying to find my way back to PJ, I committed a traffic offense, and was stopped by the police (actually it was a road trap block).

When I did not offer to ’settle’, I was given a traffic offense ticket (a ’saman’ for ‘memotong digarisan panjang‘). The police officer kindly offered that if I were to pay before June 17, I would be given a 50% discount.

So today, on the way to some errands, I went to the PJ police station to pay the traffic fine. The officer at the desk informed me that my ticket has not been keyed into the system yet, and therefore I cannot make my payment. I was told to go to the police station in ‘daerah Subang Jaya’, and request to have the ticket ‘keyed in’ before I could make the payment, otherwise I have to ‘tunggu lama sampai ia dah masuk sistem’.

I am thinking aloud here..

The authorities complained that people do not pay their traffic summons, and to encourage them to pay, an ‘early-payment discount’ is given. But for what, when one week after my ticket was issued, it was not ready for payment? That means I cannot take advantage of the discount. Another thing is, why does it take this long to process the tickets into the system?

I have not read the ‘yada yada’ (a phrase borrowed from Jarod) about 1Malaysia, but I am sure it would have been mentioned about improving efficiency of the government agencies, as a process to towards 1Malaysia?

Or is this EFFICIENCY, the 1Malaysia way? And we, Malaysians, better take it or leave it?

(peng’s note: I went all the way to the police station in ‘daerah Subang Jaya’, in Puchong, and paid a discounted fine of RM50. Beggars cannot be choosers, right?)