- I Paid A Bribe
- 14 years ago
- 2034 views
Extra Personal Service Charge
- Public Services
- Bribing of Government Officers
- Paid INR 1,000
My wife and I had to make numerous trips to the Foreigner Registration Office to be told what documents we needed (the requirements are not posted anywhere and are constantly changing even within one office, let alone in other cities) and find out when and how to submit them. We were told to just wait and then to go and come back many times. Finally, we got our registration booklets (riddled with errors as fundamental as the spelling of my family name), but they required one official's signature to be valid. We had to wait the entire day at the office for this. Before giving us the completed booklet, a lower-level worker said that we owed Rs 500 each. We were so exhausted and excited at the prospect of finally getting out of the office and not having to come back that we paid it quickly without thinking. He then tricked another family of four with the same lie. When we had our booklets in hand and were thinking more clearly, we realized that he had lied and extorted the money from us. We immediately asked for the money back, saying that he had basically stolen it, but he refused, saying it was his personal service charge (for doing his job...barely and badly). We gave up because we had been fighting for an entire week to get this booklet (a requirement for foreigners staying in India, even though they have already gone through a long process to get a visa with basically the same documents). We came away with the sense that this "foreigner registration" serves primarily as a way to hassle foreigners and enrich corrupt officials along the way. It's a bad introduction to *******