Isam Bayazidi’s Blog

Yesterday I was at the Ministry of Trade to query about starting a non-profit establishment or company, for one of the organizations/projects I am involved in. Entering the ministry was a nice shock, it was my first time there. The design is very customer-service oriented, around 50 counters, with LED displays above each stating the status of the counter, and the number of the ticket it is serving, and seats. There was 2 ticket machines, with touch LCDs for different categories and so on. I was impressed.

I moved to the public information desk, they had many brochures there about different things, I made a quick look to see if there is anything about starting a non-profit est, a nice lady asked me how she be of help (in a Jordanian way of starting a conversation and asking me “Aywa?”) I told her what I need, she told me to press one of the categories on the LCD, and wait. As soon as I pressed it, my ticket was called. I walked to the window, asked the lady there about what I need, she told me “Elshabab hnak bya3rafo” (The guys there know). I went were she pointed me, asked one of the guys, he told me to go to the lady I was at, I told him that she sent me, so he pointed me to someone different across the hall. Went there, the nice woman woman there told me to go to the information desk, and get a brochure about starting a non-profit (Information Desk is different than the public information thing I was at first).

I went there, and I was told that there is no such brochure, and he told me to go to Mr. Burhan at the Legal Dept, I asked “Where is that?” he answered “Go there and ask”. After wondering around for few minutes, I found someone talking legal things to someone, I approached to see if there is a name tag (because counter people all had name tags), but there was none. When it was my turn to ask, I confirmed that he is Burhan, and asked him my thing. He told me to go to the information desk. I told him that they sent me to you because there is no brochure. He was surprised, because it seems there was never a brochure for starting a non-profit. Anyhow, he pointed me to a person at a different counter, pointed me by name, not counter number.

I went there, asked for that guys name, someone pointed me to him. When he was done with what he had in hands, I asked him, and he was so sweet to tell me to drop the whole thing for now. As it seems there is a new law for non-profits that would make life easier, and it is expected in a month.

Now, at that point, I left the ministry. Wondering how I did waste this 30 minutes of my life on nothing. I didn’t know how to do it, all I learned after those 30 minutes is that it is better to wait for some law that may or may not come.

The funny thing is that the impression I had was very different from reality. Very organized scenery: counters, employees with uniform and name tags, a ticket system, LCDs, and so on, but still I had to jump between counters and offices to get one piece of info. probably what we need is a little more than a ticket system.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 22nd, 2005 at 11:09 am and is filed under , . You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.