While I fully appreciate the need for every householder to complete the current census and I also understand the necessity to “cross palms with silver” as an incentive for the government employees to collect the completed forms without delay, I do not understand the requirement to call four and possibly six times within two days of delivering the forms, to ask “if they have been completed yet”.

This is all the more distressing when the person who was approached on at least two occasions happens to be my 87-year-old father, whose sight is failing, and took extremely to heart the warnings about “non-completion will lead to civil prosecution”!

When the person called to collect the form and was advised about the situation, his response was: “Ha! Ha! Ha! OOO ejja… I only called a couple of times”.

I feel such representatives of central government are doing a great disservice to their country, by only having the “numbers game” coupled with their “financial target” as their first priority over normal politeness, respect and good manners.

I hope our case was an isolated one.