A covid story or why taxes are theft

Author: Stanislav Kalachev

On August 3, 2020, the government decided to raise civil servant salaries by 30%. The decision comes into effect at the end of the same month. This move by the government coincided with the expiration of the first ten days of my quarantine.

If you are wondering what the two have in common – it is the Sofia Regional Health Inspectorate, known as the RHI. They, like all other state and municipal structures, do not work well. Moreover – often they do not work at all. My personal case is a suitable illustration of this statement.

Background

My wife and I have been working from home since the beginning of the Covid-19 restrictions. We work for different companies and with different working hours - she from morning to late afternoon, and I from late afternoon to morning.

Sunday, June 5. My wife feels discomfort and fatigue. Three days later, she was not herself – chest pain, eye pain, slight fever. Accordingly, we decided to self-isolate as much as possible. On the fourth day, she decided to get tested at a nearby private laboratory because the initial symptoms were gone and she was already feeling much better. She got the test to be sure whether she was sick or not, as she did not want to put her family and friends at risk.

Before the test itself, the laboratory hands you a declaration in which you have to fill in the address where you will be quarantined, phone number, personal identification number, etc. The laboratory promised to call you if the test is positive.

They did so the next day - they confirmed that the result was positive and that they had handed over the documentation to the RHI, who should call as soon as possible and provide details on how the quarantine should proceed, what our obligations are, ask who the contact persons are, schedule a second test, and all the other supposed obligations they have.

History

As you probably remember, things took an unexpected turn. No one called on Friday. No one called us on Saturday either. Sunday came, when the Samokov district administration called my wife at her home.

The Sofia Health Insurance Institute sent my wife's name to the Samokov Health Insurance Institute because she is listed there on her ID card. Naturally, the Sofia Health Insurance Institute missed or neglected the current address given earlier in the declaration. For reference – the current address is in Mladost 1, meters from the private laboratory where we did the test.

This doesn't sound so shocking, probably. Not until you realize that the Samokov Regional Health Office has every right to write a report to my wife, since she is not at the address given to them by the RHI. And it won't be their problem, because they are fulfilling their obligations. For reference, the sanctions for not complying with quarantine are up to 10,000 leva and imprisonment for up to three years.

It's already Monday. I pick up the phone and start calling to find out - who hasn't done their job, what we should do, what we shouldn't do, does anyone know about my existence, can I go out as a contact person or not, will I have to get tested or not, and a bunch of other questions.

Not to be too detailed – after about 30 (!!!) calls we contact the RHI, they give us a new phone number of an epidemiologist on duty, since they couldn’t tell us anything. The epidemiologist on duty at the RHI starts explaining completely illogical things to us and yelling that the questions we have are not for her, she hangs up the phone very rudely and impolitely.

We call our personal doctor – her decision was to take sick leave and give me a referral to get tested. This, of course, was impossible – firstly, because there is no reason for us to be absent from work when we work from home and secondly, because our case is completely different. The next day, we contact the RHI again, who say they will call again to change the address from Samokov to Sofia and schedule a day for a second test. And so they do – the day of the second test is scheduled for Tuesday, July 21, three days before the quarantine expires.

On July 20th, my wife gets a call and has to go down to the ground floor and get a signed prescription from the RZI, regarding what she can and cannot do. This happens days before the quarantine expires. The document mentions the obligations and fines, but it doesn't mention the second test in question.

Tuesday comes and no one calls us again. Wednesday goes by. On Thursday I pick up the phone and start calling again and after an hour of trying I reach the Sofia Public Health Institute. They tell me I have to call another number. After a lot of trouble I contact the Public Health Institute “laboratory”, who say that they haven’t received my wife’s name and that they didn’t know that they had to test her – oh, surprise, someone from the Public Health Institute has overslept and forgotten again. They tell me that we can’t get a negative test result and that we can’t get tested in a private laboratory. They don’t recognize these results.

It all ended on the seventeenth (17) day of quarantine and the twentieth (20) day of self-isolation. No one called us. They wouldn't let us pay for a second test. Not only did they not test me, they wouldn't even know I existed if I hadn't called and talked to them so many times. On top of that, they told me that if I wanted to get tested, then I should pay for it. But at the same time, we can't pay for my wife's second test.

Conclusion

State and municipal workers are careless. They do it because their jobs are secure. Because the state or municipality will always pay them salaries, and the money for salaries comes... from our salaries. In order to have salaries, we have to work. And in order to work, municipal and state officials have to stop getting in the way.

There's no reason for them to try harder since their pay doesn't depend on it. Nor does their job. Has anyone heard of a downsized state administration?

I've always said that taxes are theft. All roads lead there. But I've never encountered the incompetence and laziness of employees. At least not to this extent.
The only thing they've achieved is to motivate me even more against their existence. So much so that now I'm more certain than ever that not only should their pay not be increased, but that they should even be cut by at least half. For starters.

There is no state or municipal service that could not be replaced by a private one and work many times more successfully. There simply is not one.

*The story is completely real and with real dates. Throughout the entire quarantine, and even the days before that, we did not leave the house. Our views are that people should be responsible to themselves and others. The decision was entirely ours. No one even checked on us during the entire quarantine. Until the last moment, I doubted that they knew about my existence.

PS: Taking the current address again (after they apparently lost the declaration), the RZI asked how to spell Jerusalem Blvd. – with a "Y"?

Yes, that's the level.

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