MUMBAI, SEPT 28: Thakurdwar resident S N Nadkarni got an early morning jolt when he walked across to the postboxes in his area recently to drop by some mail. Nadkarni, a retired bank executive, discovered that the mail being posted into three different postboxes - red, blue and green - was not being collected in an equal number of bags; rather, the postman was merrily dumping it into a single bag!As per the norms set by the postal department, local mail is to be deposited in the green postboxes, mail for all capital cities in the country into the blue ones and that for other destinations into the red boxes. Groups of three postboxes have been set up at several places in the city which generate a heavy flow of mail.``The collection of mail from the boxes in a single bag defeats the purpose of having different boxes. Further, the re-sorting of mail must be taking up a lot of time and energy. This could lead to delay in delivery. The postman on duty told me that the postal department gives them just onebag to collect the mail in,'' Nadkarni told Express Newsline.Vijay Khanna, the Post Master General, General Post Office (GPO), Mumbai, admitted that most of the mail collected from places with three postboxes had to be re-sorted. He blamed the practice largely on negligence on the part of citizens. ``Most of us do not know how to use the different postboxes. This is where people need to be educated. There still is a lot of confusion specially on the use of the blue post box. So, most people just shove all their letters, irrespective of their destinations, down any one of the boxes,'' he pointed out.Naturally then, this increases the pressure on a department that already has the unenviable task of sorting out over 2.5 million articles per day in the city, said Khanna. Mumbai has 87 delivery offices where postmen distribute mail and 400 offices where only postal transactions take place. Mumbai has the largest fleet of postmen - 4,300 - in India. ``But there is no such thing as a postman being givenjust one bag. There are several bags lying around in any given post office, and one needs to pick up as many as one wants,'' Khanna said.Sources with the city's postal department, however, said at times, the postmen are advised to take just one bag along. ``But again, citizens are to be blamed. Since they do not follow the instructions written on the postboxes, more often than not, the mail lands in the wrong box. And since it has to be re-sorted any way, one does not take the trouble of carrying more than one bag for collection,'' they said. The practice does delay delivery of post at times, they added.
