How bad are Malaysian Kementerian at replying emails? We emailed 9 countries to compare

When it comes to replying to emails, Malaysian government departments seem to have a reputation for being notoriously bad with replies. Like this meme that recently came out after the earthquake tremors in Malaysia, which kinda sums up public perception of our government services:

But we too had a similar experience when this writer tried to contact the Ministry of Women, Family, and Community Development for this story on the local counseling industry. Their website’s Contact Us page even gave us a 404 error, and still does to this day (and although they did provide us with a contact, that contact did not respond to our email). Also, if you’ve been following Cilisos for a while, you’ll know that years back, some of our other writers sent emails to a certain department *cough PDRM cough* and are still awaiting replies to this day. 

So this got us thinking: is it the same everywhere outside Malaysia as well? Do citizens of other countries also hopelessly send emails to their governments, with the notion that their efforts will be in vain? Well, we tried it.

 

We emailed three or more government departments from 9 countries

For a somewhat *fair* comparison, we selected both English and non-speaking countries, and picked some of the more significant departments.  The list is as follows:

1. Malaysia (Istana Negara, Federal Mufti Department, Ministry of Defense)
2. Singapore (Ministry of Women and Societal Development, Department of Statistics, Ministry of Defense)
3. United States (Department of Justice, Department of Defense, Office of the President)
4. United Kingdom (National Health Service, Department for Work and Pensions, Ministry of Foreign Trade)
5. India (Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Department of Expenditure, Department of Revenue, Department of Economic Affairs)
6. Nepal (National Information Technology Center, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Election Committee)
7. South Korea (3 departments from the Ministry of the Interior and Safety)
8. North Korea (yes, really) 
9. Indonesia (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, Ministry of Manpower)

We also had to formulate questions according to the respective departments within those countries, so that they would be relevant to each department, which would hopefully give us a higher chance of getting replies.

Also, while we’ll try to reveal as much as we can, we are unable to reveal the exact contents of some of the replies we got, due to certain laws in place. Just trust us, bro.

 

South Korea, Nepal, and India completely ghosted us

Ok, no shade on these countries, but when we tried contacting their departments, not only did none reply, but a couple of the email addresses we found were actually outdated addresses on legitimate government websites. And the new ones they provided us with also did not send us any replies:

 

 

Now, this is pure speculation of course, but because South Korea and Nepal don’t have English as an official language, that may also have been a factor in them not replying to us. Either that, or South Korea really has been overrun by a zombie apocalypse, just like in Netflix’s All Of Us Are Dead.

It’s also important to note that while these departments didn’t respond, it doesn’t mean that other departments in their respective governments would have ignored us too, so again, benefit of the doubt.

But ok fine, South Korea ghosted us. The best part is still yet to come, though. You wouldn’t believe us if we said it, but…

 

Their communist neighbors to the North replied to us!

Yes, you read that right. North Korea, not South, replied to our email.

So not many people may know this, but while it is technically impossible to email the North Korean government directly (since North Korean emails are designed to bounce all incoming messages), North Korea has a Spain-based Korean Friendship Association (KFA), which serves as a connector between North Korea and the rest of the world. In fact, their official website actually advertises itself as the ‘First Official Webpage of the DPR of Korea’.

Sanctioned by the government of North Korea themselves, the KFA was founded by a Spaniard named Alejandro Cao de Benós (Korean name Cho Son-il, meaning ‘Korea is One’) who willingly defected to North Korea and now serves as the Special Delegate of their Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries. Yes, it gets weirder the more you read into it, but trust us; you really should, because that story is wild.

Actually, given that he’s the KFA’s President and only salaried member, it isn’t so crazy to think that he himself may have penned this response to our question on when North Korea would reopen for tourism:

Short and simple, but definitely a human response if we ever saw one. On the other hand…

 

We had mixed results from the US, UK, and Indonesia

Remember that one time back in 2016 when we emailed the US Department of Justice about 1MDB, and got a reply within 3 hours? Well, this time round, we wanted to see if we could get some bigger fish, so we went for their Department of Defense and… *drum roll* the Office of the President of the United States.

But sadly, no, neither senpai noticed us this time around; in fact, our email to Mr Biden on the effects of the Russia-Ukraine conflict on Malaysia was actually bounced. Understandable, considering he’s having to handle it in real life. We could be spies for all you know, right?

For Indonesia, only their Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources replied to us. We’d say theirs was the cutest reply among all, and they were actually very helpful. So yeah, A+ for Indonesia’s Minergi Ministry.

In the UK, the only ones who personally replied were Work and Pensions (same-day response), who politely apologized and told us that that wasn’t part of their job. Lovely. We can’t show you what they replied with though (cos confidential according to UK law), so here’s what we wrote to them:

Anyway, this left us feeling kinda tak puas, so we decided to expand our horizons a bit. You see, a little known fact is that the British Army actually accepts applications from Commonwealth citizens. Aaand, since Malaysia is part of the Commonwealth, we decided to DM their FB page to apply to join the British Army, of course (although you can actually email the army, we only found the address much later, so we used FB instead).

And guess what? Our diligence was rewarded, because the British Army actually responded almost instantly with this:

Just note that this may have been an automated response, since people sometimes do that on FB pages. It did answer our question, though, so well done either way.

But there was ONE country who (as we expected, actually) promptly replied to ALL THREE of our emails.

The winner for most responsive government goes to… Singapore.

Woo, big surprise there.

Yep, believe it or not, all three ministries/departments that we emailed returned a response. Unfortunately, due to the Official Secrets Act (Chap 213), we can’t actually reveal any of their replies, and because it’s Singapore, we don’t wanna play-play with them la. Their emails even say ‘Please consider the environment before printing this email’, which kinda scares us into wanting to chuck our office printer out the window.

But we can show you what we wrote them. Not like questions/requests were super serious anyway, just take a look:

 

 

All of their replies were super professional and personalized too, and each had the intention of solving our problem in the most effective way possible. In fact, their MINDEF actually sent us a pretty polite-but-terrifying response asking the purpose of our NS procedure question. Soooo if we disappear tomorrow, you all know why.

Anyway, for good measure, we also emailed PM Lee Hsien Loong to wish him congratulations on his recent 70th birthday. No response, but oh well, we shot our shot.

But what about Malaysia? Well, much to our surprise…

 

2 out of 3 Malaysian departments we emailed actually replied

Replied: Istana Negara

Now we’ll be honest, when we emailed the Istana Negara seeking an audience with the Agong, we really didn’t expect any sort of reply. So imagine our surprise when they actually got back to us with a number to call, and within a day’s time. Pretty efficient for the highest power in the land.

Replied: Federal Territory Mufti Department

Another surprise was when one of our writers got prompt responses from the Federal Territory Mufti’s Office when she contacted them for more information for an article. Not only did they reply within a day, they also directed her towards an authoritative figure who was equally, if not more helpful with his email replies. So yeah, we never thought we’d say this, but A+ for our federal religious authorities in terms of public support.

Ghosted: Ministry of Defense

However, we hit a dead end when we asked the Ministry of Defense about Malaysia’s stance on the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Possibly too sensitive of a topic? Maybe not important enough for them to answer? Can’t say for sure. Admittedly, we could have asked a ‘safer’, more ‘answerable’ question, so we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt here.

 

Maybe our government services aren’t so bad after all

Based on the results, we guess that perhaps other countries have internal policies that prohibit them from replying to certain emails, or they could be just so inundated with emails that they can’t reply to all. Unless you’re Singapore of course, who are probably just so efficient that people hardly ever have a reason to complain anyway.

In any case, the public does have the right to answers when there’s uncertainty, and any kind of answer is better than none. So the next time you have a complaint or concern, do exercise your national right and email your government; chances are, you just might get a response.