Morag from Manama

I’m feeling quite smug with myself this week, although at a cost!

The husband you see had given me a job to do, as he does now and then. Come to think about it, those wee jobs he likes to dish out to me on his way out the door in the mornings have become a bit too frequent of late.

He usually likes to mutter under his breath, something about ‘coming back as an expat wife, in his next life’ as I roll my eyes right back at him. This particular task was to pay a visit to the Electricity & Water Authority, Bahrain, otherwise known as EWA, Bahrain and as I Googled, discovered its location is in Country Mall. 

That was the first hurdle jumped, as I knew exactly where on Budaiya Highway it was situated. So off I set with every document I may possibly need in my bag, feeling confident and self assured that this was going to be a piece of cake.

The first thing I spotted was that a ‘number’ was required from a ticket machine; I quickly cased the establishment in search of the elusive machine when a lovely security guard pointed me in the direction of the first counter. Aha, now I realised that this was where I got my magic number! Number now in hand, correct documents filled in, I sit myself down in a prime spot that allows full view of every red flashing number in the room – you see there are so many, that I’m terrified I’m going to miss my slot.

On the verge of developing a migraine from the flashing numbers, I try and fathom out in which order these numbers are coming out? After an eternity, I give up and then my number appears. I jump up a little too enthusiastically and being the only woman in sight, I quickly take on a demure demeanour and walk slowly to my counter.

Explain to the very nice gentleman behind the counter that I need to terminate our account at our present address and to open another account at our soon to be new address. Paperwork was completed, required documents approved and all was going well although painstakingly slow, I could see light at the end of the tunnel … when suddenly, I was asked to make a payment of BD1,000 security deposit.

I assumed there was some sort of mistake and I proceeded to cleverly produce my security certificate and receipt that we had already paid BD1,000 for the account I was terminating.

Surely, it’s only a matter of transferring the original BD1,000 deposit over to the new account? But no, apparently the system does not allow that!

There was no way around it, another BD1,000 deposit was required and nobody could tell me when the refund of the original BD1,000 deposit will land in our bank account!

As I complained about the issue of EWA now holding BD2,000 of our money, the reply I got was: ‘Yes, and the cost of your electricity will be very high soon’ … with a nice smile, of course. I’ll let you know how long it takes.