No one is immune from bureaucratic abuse — not an ordinary citizen, not an experienced lawyer. The system is faceless, and it will always find a weak point.
In 2020, during the pandemic, someone simply erased me from the register. Literally.
The imitation of an electronic queue
My child was two and a half years old. The daycare place we had been assigned was on the other side of the city — an hour and a half each way. I went to the local Education Authority to submit a transfer application.
In the lobby, a staff member wrote my name in a paper journal with a pencil. This was called “the imitation of an electronic queue” for submitting transfer documents. No receipt, no confirmation slip. Just graphite that can be rubbed out, and a face in a mask that you will not be able to describe later.
I had court that morning. My husband took the documents over following my instructions. He handed them to people in masks and heard: “We will call you.”
A closed circle: how officials protect each other from accountability
A month passed. We were not on any list. The documents had “never been received.”
I buried them in complaints and went personally to the prosecutor’s office. The prosecutor nodded sympathetically: “Yes, corruption, yes, gaps in the law…” But when the time came to act, the system put up its shields.
First came the stalling letters. Then came an official refusal to continue any correspondence with us. The reasoning was breathtaking in its cynicism: “You were never there.”
I had personally seen my husband on the steps of the Education Authority when I drove past on my way to court. I knew he had submitted the documents. For the people behind the desks, we had become characters whose version of events dissolved against an empty line in their journal.
No official stamp — no person. No document — no problem.
The corruption niche
It turned out there was a formal procedure for daycare enrolment — through the state services portal. For transfers, there was nothing. The pencil journal existed precisely so that one surname could always be rubbed out and a preferred one written in. This loophole was too useful to the system for anyone to close it.
I had to start the entire application process again. Months lost.
What to do so your documents don’t disappear at the Education Authority
Do not send someone trusting. Places like this require legal scepticism — the system does not forgive taking people at their word.
Photograph everything you hand over — in the hands of the person receiving it.
Demand a written receipt listing each document, with the official’s position and full name. Without it, you legally “never came.”
Be polite — but conduct yourself in a way that makes them afraid of losing your paperwork specifically.