I run into an old friend and his wife-to-be at ChinaTown point yesterday when I met another friend to go to China Town to buy a new fish tank. (Broke the old one… that story later.) When we had dessert together – since it’s his birthday and I got no gifts for him – he told me his fiance received a mail from SLB [Singapore Library Board] informing her to pay a 15cts fine. And I suddenly recall not long ago another friend told me he received a similar letter to pay a 65cts fine.

I find it really ridiculous that they had actually done so and I was told someone who got a similar letter – this one 20cts – wrote a complaint to either the Stooge Times or TODAY about the matter and asked if it was cost effective to do so. I was told the SLB’s reply was that it only cost them 8cts a piece to mail the reminders and there was a total of S$5 million in uncollected fines.

Whoever thought it is a good idea to collect the fines now must have had brown matter in between his ears instead of the usual gray one. You know the brown one that you produce everyday? He should be fired or shot because while it might be a bad idea to write off S$5 million, it would have been easier to just write off those fines under S$5 and move on. I wonder if what they write off wouldn’t be the same as the total cost of all the 8cts reminders they have sent.

Above which, there is good reason to write off those fines. That became obvious because while discussing this ridiculous matter with my friends, we realized that it would cost at least S$1.30 (unless you are a student with fare concession) to travel to a library to pay it – i.e. if there’s a library in your town centre, and you need to take a feeder bus to go there and it cost 65cts one way using your Ezlink ItchyLink card. (It will cost you 90cts one way if you pay cash! More, if your nearest library needs multi-modal transporation.)

Even if you can just walk to one, you need to find time. Assuming you are paid S$2.5K a mth and you work 22 days every mth and 8 hours a day, you are paid S$14.20 per hour. So if it takes up an hour in total to just travel there and pay it and then return home, it will cost you $15.50 nett to pay a silly less than $1 fine. (And of course you need to put a value to your time! You are being made to do something at the expense of your free time which could be better use otherwise!)

Some civil servants serpents are just too damned stupid to realise just how much waste and losses they are creating for people. But he can of course console himself to having increase the bottom line of our zonal duo-polistic transportation companies. And if he has shares in them, console himself further on the fact that he will be getting more dividends from them due to the increase in profits.