CLASHES, CODE OF ETHICS, STORY OF BUREAUCRACY

He was about 45-50 years old. He claimed to have injured himself at work. That day he had a hearing at the compensation courts in Sydney central. His fate would be decided that day. At about 7.30 in the morning, he walked through ticket barriers in Auburn station. The station was crowded. The train to the city central had already arrived and was discharging commuters. Another crowd was rushing up the stairs to catch the train to city. He pushed through the crowd. He had to catch that train to arrive on time into the city in order to meet his barrister and interpreter. The train was about to leave. He had to catch this train. The stairs were diagonally separated by a railing. Close to 700-cm.in height. Commuters coming out of the train were less in numbers than those who were trying to get onto it. If only he could just leap over the other side! it was possible to just catch the train before the doors closed. He sized up the railing… However ` what if there are insurance investigators after me? He had heard of insurance investigators secretly filming people with suspect workers compensation claims...` ` No, not this time of the morning and on the last day, no` he thought. He put his left arm across, held onto the railing and casually jumped to the other side, with no apparent hindrance.

This had had claimed that he could not pray because of the injuries he had sustained at work. He had fooled me at the first meeting I had interpreted in his Barrister’s chambers about a month prior.

The day before a Solicitor I knew from Auburn had offered to have breakfast with me at the cafeteria of compensation courts. He was to be appearing at court that day. We would be driven to the city by one of his nieces.

I arrived at Auburn station at about 7.30 as I started descending the stairs amongst a crowd of people, I saw someone pushing through, in a hurry. He was the man I was going to interpret for later that day. This was the person he had so much pain that he could not perform the rituals of his faith. He reached to the railing, Jumped to the other side.

I registered the action. I descended, embarrassed that I had seen something I wished I never would.

He won his case later that day. Was compensated witha whole lot of dollars for his suffering.

I went home only to find more letters of demand for payment in my post box.

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