Sue me, you bunch of incompetents!

If I sound angry, you have read me right. I am really angry. And the source of this outrage is the absolute lack of management at the Registrar General's Department on South Quay, Port of Spain.
This department represents everything that is bad in government service, except possibly the levels of corruption.
They just do not know how to organise anything. When CEPEP was formed, a host of new people were brought into the system, trying to get name approvals, filing company incorporation documents and worst of all, lining up by the cashier to pay for every document.
You would think the Registrar would plan for this, wouldn't you? And when NEDCO was giving out small and medium sized loans, all those poor people from Laventille and Morvant and Cocoyea who wanted to bottle a little pepper sauce and jam had to register their businesses. They had to go into this very formal, unfriendly environment that the registrar told us was "user friendly".
I have listened to countless stories from women who didn't know what they were supposed to do, the alternative of course being that they would have a hire a lawyer. So the lines got longer. And the cashier? The cashier still opened at 8.30 with an hour for lunch. In a government office the cashier is closed for lunch. More recently they have extended the cash to 3 p.m. long after everyone wants to leave the downtown Port of Spain dump. Listen, every store should close for lunch, the racing pool should close and the Play Whe machine should close for lunch. Business people should take their cue from none less than the Minister of Legal Affairs. Who he, by the way?
When the department began issuing computerised birth certificates, no provision was made for the thousands of people who poured into Port of Spain to get certificates for themselves and their children. You would think that in this 2010, the department would know the value of networks and put a simple system in place.
They waited until tens of thousands of people from South Trinidad lined up outside their building in port of Spain from 5.30 a.m. before they opened an office in San Fernando. The office, of course, does NOT deal with company documents. They put people under tents to wait with a number to get a birth certificate. Now they are putting people under the same tents to wait to be called to the cashier. These people are raving mad. People who come to do business with the Registrar of Companies are put in a tent! A guard comes around, calls your number, lines you up as if you are in a ID parade and then marches you to the cashier.
You would think that a department dealing with lawyers will be well organised. You would think that the lawyers themselves will insist on better service. BUT NO! Their clerks know how to beat the system. They take a number for the cashier while they are waiting in the line to get their documents checked and move across to the line while the poor "don't have no friend" sits in the tent as if they are in a WAKE!
The truth is that lawyers have no intention of fixing anything. I have said repeatedly that this is a mediocre profession where duncy people could look bright because they are fighting against other duncy people before some duncy lawyers who make it to the bench. Look at the Attorney General, a mediocre lawyer who looked good because he won a few cases against the government when former Prime Minister Patrick Manning had tried to run away with the Constitution. Now he is in government he doesn't know what he is talking about.
I mentioned all this to a lawyer yesterday and I was told that I would not get a lawyer to represent me when I have to face the courts. Well good for all you who are happy making plenty money overcharging for deeds and traffic offences and poor policing and challenging politicians who themselves don't know the law.