Pos Malaysia Berhad is, like Malaysian government-linked companies, on the rip-off trail. It has peculiar notion why it is around. It is not to serve the public or provide a service, but to make money for its senior executives and, if there is enough change left, for the postal service. The first step is to computerise its operations, done not to make it easier to deal with those who use it, but as a religious offering in the temple of computerisation and modernisation. So it would stop any but the most determined, the contract is usually given to an Umno-based conglomerate of well-connected near-bankrupts with doubtful credentials and supervised by well-connected politicians of similar intelligence and reach. Their aim is profit for little or no work, and hand it down lowest bidder for a system in due course would not work.

The mess in Plus Highway, Telekom, Tenaga Nasional Berhad, Pos Malaysia Berhad, Putrajaya, the supremely inefficient public transport system reflect it. The list is endless, so the woes and frustrations of those who use these services.

Pos Malaysia has computerised its mail services, and "rationalised" the postal rates. It has explained the new rates in a leaflet, "Reclassification of Mail Products", so obtusely written in gobbledygook that its tortuous bureaucratic passages need an experienced English tutor to translate. English is one of two languages I am fluent, and speak, read and write, in. But I can only guess what it is about. These new rates are pushed on an unsuspecting public at the last possible moment, two weeks before it came into force on March 1. There are vague statements over the years of the changes to come, but none nearer the date, and no explanations whatever of what the changes entail.

I have at times enquired at the enquiry counter at the General Post Office in Kuala Lumpur and at the Brickfields and Bangsar post offices. All I got were confused answers which often contradicted each other. But an announcement is seen as proof that all knew about. Look at the mess surrounding the illegal workers: it is not unusual, and is around at every government plan.

I found out this week what the new rates meant in practice. If I continued to address the envelopes by hand as I did on half a dozen this week I must pay a 40 per cent surcharge in postage stamps; I had to paste a 50 sen stamp instead of the usual 30 sen.