The Education Ministry should conduct an inquiry as to why the Unit Pusat Universiti (UPU) had mishandled the release of university application forms resulting not only in the disgraceful pandemonium in the various post offices in the country on Friday, but also the black market sale of the forms four or five times the official price.
The Unit Pusat Universiti has now issued a statement advising students not to rush for university application forms, saying it still has stock of more than 20,000 forms and that students can get the forms by post instead of queuing up at selected post offices to buy them.
The UPU advice has come too late to be useful as the damage has already been done. After the disgraceful pandemonium in the various post offices on Friday, parents and students had buy the forms on the black market for between four or five times higher than the official prices.
Although the UPU matriculation forms are being sold at RM11.50 a set and the UPU universiti application forms for RM15 a set, parents and students had to buy them in the black market at between RM50 to RM60 per set.
What is the use of the UPU now coming out with a statement that it has stock of more than 20,000 forms after all the pandemonium at the post offices and the purchase at exorbitant black market rates for those who were unable to get forms last Friday? This is not “music to the ears” but adding “oil to fire” of the fully-justified frustration and anger of students and parents.
Couldn’t the UPU have publicly made clear well in advance that there was no need for the students and their parents to rush to the post offices for the UPU forms, which would have avoided the disgraceful spectacle of the scramble and pandemonium by the students and their parents, some of whom had even to camp overnight to get favourable position in the queue for the forms the next morning?
Furthermore, why couldn’t the UPU advertise and invite in advance requests for the university application forms by post well before last Friday - which would have effectively avoided the pandemonium on Friday as well as the black market sales of the forms?
It would appear that while the more we progress, we are also at the some time retrogressing in terms of public service and quality.
The Government does not seem ever to learn from such disgraceful incompetencies, which not only cause a lot of unnecessary hardships to the people, but are also public relations disasters.
It is not only the Education Ministry which should conduct an inquiry as to how such a UPU public service “disaster” could have been allowed to occur, the entire public service should conduct a post-mortem as how to ensure that the UPU public service “disaster” would not be repeated in other Ministries and government agencies some time in the future.
(22/12/96)