On the second day in Phnom Penh, I received a message to report that the wheelchairs I had shipped over from Wheelchairs for Kids had arrived in Phnom Penh port. So exciting, as I hadn't expected them for another week. I looked up the address of the port office, which was near to where we were staying and they spoke to my tuk tuk driver about how to get to the port. It was going to be an hour round trip, so we would have to come back another time.
So this brought us to our second trip to Phnom Penh a couple of weeks later, for the sole purpose of sorting out the wheelchairs. We drove for 40 minutes from the city in a tuk on highway 3, past the airport out to Tec Srun Dry Port, arriving about midday, armed with the shipping documents. The guards at the gate turned us away as it was lunch time and said to come back at 2pm, as of course government officials need a verrrrry long siesta. At the suggestion of our driver we headed back to the airport to wait, as at least it had air conditioning.
After some terrible and over priced coffee, and an impromptu Khmer lesson we were back at the port after the obligatory rest. Moved from office to office, I was sat down on a chair whilst the documents were whisked away elsewhere before being told that we had to have the documents stamped by a government minister back in Phnom Penh. Argggggh!
So back to the Pehn, jiggegy jig, presented my documents and a timid woman told I need to write a letter stating what the product is and its weight and show a copy of my passport. Never mind that the shipping notice I presented has all this information! So we went back to the hotel, I whipped up a letter, printed a copy of the passport, back in the tuk and away we went. We were handed a manilla folder to house our documents and sat and waited....and waited. People came, people went.
Eventually a man ushered us to his desk. He looked at my letter and laughed, saying it was very short and needs to not be written to this "Whom It may Concern" but to some minister's name. He then brings out some one else's letter as a template, saying it needs to be on letterhead and contain all this other information. Plus we need the registration documents for TTLC and the letter and the passport need to be in the name of the person who is the manager/director of the centre. My heart sank. They are in America. I fought back tears as my ears buzzed and things flipped out of focus. I was so disappointed that it was so difficult to help these children in their home country due to their own country's red tape! I had paid for the shipping, the chairs were not being resold....it just didn't seem fair. If only I had shipped the goods in my name and not TTLC's I would have the authority to pick them up. Big mistake.
Heavy hearted we stumbled back into the tuk. A whole day gone wading through bureaucratic bullshit for no result. Sigh.
To top things off, back in Kampot, 3 hours away, I receive a garbled phone call in broken English from the shipping agency and freight company, Straights International in Phnom Penh asking why I hadn't collected the authority to release goods customs document from them and paid them $150. Oh, maybe because no-one told me to?
No comments:
Post a Comment