As I told you in this post getting a passport in Venezuela can be an expensive and complicated thing. @imabby17 had to go expressly to the main immigration office in Caracas to pay an absurd fine that prevented her from scheduling an appointment to renew it.
After the payment was processed, they allowed her to enter the system and schedule the renewal in Puerto Ordaz. We wasted some printing on documents they ended up not requesting, but as they say, "better safe than sorry."
We arrived at the place at about 7:30. The line was already long.
They allowed people to enter the facility where the office is located at about 8:30.
Not a nice sight to see for sure. Fortunately, most people in line were going to process different things (I.Ds., data updates, etc.). There were few people with passport appointments.
This one, though, was a pretty sight to see.
My daughter and I wondered why they don't do the same on every avenue, especially considering that those capachos (canna indica) are easy to cultivate and bloom generously.
I waited outside while she went through the whole process.
I used the time to run some errands. I wanted to get some personal care items for @annaky. @imabby17 was ready at about 10 am. She needed to use a restroom and it was one of those moments that make some of us want to leave and never come back.
The bathroom was locked and the janitor (whose salary users pay because they ask people for a "collaboration" after the use the bathroom) complained because I asked her to please unlock it for my daughter. She said she had been standing there for a while and noone came. I guess it is terribly inconvenient to ask them to do their job, but most importantly, "Why the hell does she have to lock the only bathrooms in a building full of people (including children)?"
Anyway, most people have normalized that and do not complain, but I think that the accumulation of "little" normal things like this is what makes it so difficult to fix our structural cultural problems.
We left that area and headed to a bus stop a block away.
Now, my daughter has to wait ten business days to pick up her new passport.
Comments (1)
Bureaucracy at its finest.... And that line sure looked discouraging!
What can I say? It has been like this so long, people celebrate when it takes them just a couple of hours. Efficiency is a concept that has been progressively erased from our vocabulary.