Money Can't Buy Me Salik

The potty Salik road toll system continues to amaze me. I ran out of credit a couple of weeks ago and, for one reason or another, I haven't managed to top it up. It's just been a mad time and every time I remember or am near a service station I've either been in a mad tear to get to a meeting or I haven't had cash on me. Because, of course, you can only pay for the blasted toll in cash.

A while ago they announced that you could pay online, so I toddled off to their website (www.salik.ae) to do just that. Imagine my delight when I saw that the module was up and running!

So I entered my account number, PIN code and mobile number and then went downstairs to the car to find the tag number because for some reason the system doesn't know my tag number automatically (a miracle of technology integration, is Salik). And then went to the 'Recharge' option on the menu, entered Dhs 250 as my recharge amount and pressed 'Next' to take me to the egovernment epay service and make my payment.

Nothing happened. Because it doesn't work. It's not broken or anything like that: it simply just isn't working. And I've been going back over the past week or so just to check that it still doesn't work.

So I checked my balance (32 Dhs apparently, but I know that it is -32 Dhs) and my violations (no violations).

No violations? Yes! No violations!

Genius. You can't pay for it, but it doesn't matter because nothing happens when you don't pay for it. Which makes it completely, utterly and totally pointless.

Which is what so many of us have been saying all along, I know...