The billboards and the government media are full of the news that the government, as promised, is fulfilling its electoral commitment to reduce the utility rates charged to families and homes.

I have no doubt that this is being implemented. But what interests the population comes down to what they fork out in the end, what they pay. And there are many devious twists between what the government orders and what the ARMS bill says.

This is not the first time this has happened. The previous government promised cuts many times, not in the utilities bills, but in income tax. However, by the time they filtered down to the end users, they were hardly noticeable.

Now take ARMS. First of all, this company has not been very regular in sending bills, or at least there are sections of people who complain the bills are quite irregular, although they are meant to be sent every two months.

Then ARMS has the bad habit of sometimes sending Estimates and sometimes sending Actual bills. It is only those households with a stable lifestyle, who have been living in the same house for years and years and who have everything shipshape that can hope to make head or tail of the bills. Sometimes people pay more than what they are supposed to pay on Estimates only to find their Actual bills are lower.

That comes from the nature of things, I suppose, but I thought that with the much-maligned IBM smart meters, they could read the meters from the ARMS offices and thus all bills would be Actual. But apparently this is not done, for reasons which I fail to understand, unless that is because the authorities are afraid there are more people skewing up the system than have been pardoned or arrested.

This is not all with regard to ARMS and electricity and water bills. Faced with a population where many relocate, the ARMS process of dealing with these movements is very complicated, although it is all for the best of reasons.

This paper has often reported how people who lease apartments struggle to get their owners’ consent to register with ARMS and how there is a big difference between a Domestic rate and a Residential rate.

Regarding the (mainly foreign) tenants’ complaint about this spanner in the wheels, there is an underlying suspicion that the owners would not have registered the apartment so are afraid the government will find them out.

On the other hand, as was explained to me some time ago, the owners may be afraid the residents would leave them with a hefty bill before they scamper off and the owners would have enormous problems to be reimbursed.

So for all the government hype and spin, the much-acclaimed cut in rates may well become much more diluted than can be felt by many people. This government boasts it keeps its feet on the ground so there may be cause to ensure that the promised cuts are real and effective.

This has unhappily become the country (like many other countries, it seems) where people ensconced in unassailable positions treat the common people like a bunch of idiots.

I am not referring here (only) to the ARMS people but also to people in banks, at Inland Revenue and elsewhere.

I have seen charges introduced by banks and you cannot question them, or get the bank to reply, or even find a Customer Service that is really a service and get somebody to listen to your complaint.

These past two days have seen the Facebook pages filled by people complaining about the various mobile companies for their disservice – you call and are left hanging, listening to tuneless music, and no one to answer your queries.

I have known cases where letters sent by Registered Mail to the Inland Revenue have disappeared from the files, even when the department itself would have replied to these letters.

I just do not know how these departments do their business. In an interview I carried out for the Business Weekly, the point was made that it is not enough to give computers to so many government departments when there is no follow-up to ensure that the change is really effective in that it promotes more efficiency.

How many times do we encounter government department that are still based on paper even though this paper is created by a computer? How many times the much-heralded modernisation and digitalisation of our processes are not monitored to ensure they have really cut down on the paperwork that is needed and to get the processes telescoped and simplified?

The point was also made that after the computerisation process, what was needed was not austerity measures that ensure the failure of all systems but rather to ensure that the people using computers knew their systems and used it to shorten the processes, instead of logging on to Facebook and all the other game sites that MITA allows them to log on to.

There should be process measurement and constant customer care to ensure that people get a satisfactory service.

The mentality that I am afraid has crept into all areas of our lives, both in government service and the private sector providers is that in many cases they aim to maximise the revenue and hang the consequences. Cheap and shoddy service by private sector providers is rampant, and as for that provided by the public sector, the situation is actually worse.

Having a change of government every few years should ensure that a shoddy and lacklustre service is punished by unseating that government, but as we all know, what has happened has not sensibly improved matters. On the contrary, inefficient people seem to have been replaced by equally inefficient people.

I suspect there is worse: there is now a cronyism that may have been there before March 2013 but which is now even more rampant, thanks to the largest Cabinet in living history, thanks to the inner links and appointments coming out of a hat. When appointments and promotions are made not on the strength of a recruitment process but on the basis of who knows who, you get inefficient people promoted beyond their levels of competence.

The end result of all this is that if the government is not careful and continually monitoring what is happening and taking remedial action where necessary, the resultant inefficiency will obliterate any gains the government may have thought to deliver by means of the rates cuts.

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