Sunday 22 May 2011

Poland's Most Hated Acronyms


1. ZUS, responsible for all kind of pensions. Irresponsible in the way it handles money, and totally crazy in the way it purchases IT systems. ZUS subsidy is the biggest budget cost in the country. 

2. GDDKiA, responsible for national roads, including expressways and highways. They are constantly ridiculed for not anticipating the snow every year [1]. Complaining about Polish roads is a significant part of our culture; it's performed regularly country-wide. People are so used to complaining about it, that many of them seem to be blind to all the actual improvements in this field. 

3. PKP, responsible for nearly all the tracks, most trains, most train stations. It’s a state-controlled monopolist, extremely ineffective. It owns enormous amounts of land in Poland, that thing alone with proper management should make PKP very rich. Obviously, it’s not. 

4. PZPN, responsible for Polish Football. Poles love football and hate PZPN, so politicians officially hate it too, but as soon as Polish National Team is playing in any kind of championships, every last one of them is wearing a red-white scarf posing for the camera along with all the critics, journalists and fans. 

5. TPSA. Long-time monopolist in the telecommunication market, responsible for impeding the development of Internet in Poland, ridiculed for poor customer service. TPSA is not a monopolist anymore, so the hatred towards it seems to be fading lately.

[1] Obviously it's not the case. The case is that snowplows don't grow on trees, and people who demand that every road in the country should be black 5 minutes after the fall of snow are being deliberately stupid.

3 comments:

  1. ad. 3. As a matter of railway network, it is managed by PLK, a subsidiary of PKP.

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  2. The list above should be much, much longer.. We have many more institutions that are a pain in the ass, and even more those that do not have a cool acronym.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Since I'm planning this blog to continue its existence, I can't just enumerate and ridicule all these spoilt institutions at once. :-)

    ReplyDelete