Stealing (thieves in the post office)the post and Increasing the Postage

Increasing the postage is no remedy to the systematic stealing by unscrupulous agents in the main sorting house in Colombo.
I have lost two cheques sent from USA over the past three months.

I get an email before posting the cheque from USA.

I did not want to complain to the local Post Office (Peradeniya to be precise) since the lot working there are very good and I say it is probably the best post office in Sri-Lanka (Kandy does not get this accolade).

My unofficial inquiries revealed that there is a gang in Colombo who scrutinize all the mail, especially coming from Middle East (where illiterate house maids enclose currency notes in their letters) and open them and steal the money and destroy the mail.

This is happening from 1970s (it is more rampant under current regime where illicit dealers have actually become ministers).

I can remember my brother in UK used to send Wilkinson blades (for cutting thin tissues for advanced level practicals) and they used to put a magnet and detect them (I started losing them) and this operation was terminated abruptly.

When I was in Colombo I did some investigation and that revealed they use steam to open the letters.

This Buddhist country has become a robber barons country now.

They even steal the ballot paper.

That is the only development we can boast about.

I think use of automation and postal code is a way forward but still these guys will find a way to steal.

Manual sorting should be minimized.

I am posting this to my principles in USA.

All my mail (including UK and Germany ) including books and magazine I have  subscribed to are tampered with.

It is ridiculous for a government (they become political stooges without proper backbone) servants to raise this issue once retired and from  a safe house abraod.

They do precise little when holding an important post and become wiser after retirement (once pension is granted)! 

We have a government auditor gone blind after throwing acid on his face by culprits involved in a grand fraud.
He recently exposed a judge who is illegally possessing a wild baby elephant in his safe house.
He was immediately posted to a non-functional pool. 
Then we had a mass scale fraud on rebating VAT on non existing letter of credit business.
Only one of the racketeers went into prison.
Others are still holding the posts.
There is no functioning Public Service Commission or Bribery Commission, all the crooks are having a gale of a time.

This includes our cricket board too. 

Reproduction

August 15, 2014, 7:22 pm

Sri Lanka Post (SLP) has increased the postage by 100% beginning this month, I am surprised as to why the SLP is not looking into measures such as using the POSTCODE, to reduce cost and lessen the burden on the customers. Increasing the postage will not carry letters across to the addressee from the point of posting any faster than before. The POSTCODE on the other hand which has many benefits can achieve faster delivery of mail at lesser cost. I am unable to understand the Persistent avoidance of the SLP to use the POSTCODE, for the last 17 years. The time has come now to deserve everybody’s attention to it.

SLP introduced the POSTCODE in 1997. Since that day it never used it, nor was there any visible attempt to use it during the last 17 years. The POSTCODE is considered as a very important and a useful system, sometimes essential by the postal services around the world. I am really puzzled by the unimportance, the uselessness and the disregard shown to the POSTCODE by the SLP. Perhaps, it is of interest to all of us to know, the purpose of introducing the POSTCODE, if the SLP had no intention of using it.

System of indicating the POSTCODE in the postal address is widely used by the Postal Services. It is used by 75% of the postal services in the world. According to the UPU (Universal Postal Union) records, 142 out of the 192 UPU member countries were using the Postcode system by the end of 2012. The purpose of the Postcode is to aid in mail sorting, by both mechanized and manual methods. It enables you to pre-sort your mail, bypassing a number of sorting processes and thereby reducing your cost and also sorting your mail faster. Since SLP does all its mail sorting manually, it has an added benefit to the SLP by eliminating the need to read the post town, written in different languages, thereby a solution to the Lack of Tri-lingual competence of the mail sorting staff which is definitely a problem to the SLP.

The SLP has never announced any reason nor has given any explanation for not using the POSTCODE at any time during this long period of 17 years. There is no indication about not using it even in its website; it gives practically no information about the POSTCODE, in there. It only gives information of a problem of towns in Sri Lanka having similar names. And gives long descriptions of how the OCR machines sort mail with all the technical details of it. And at the ends it states, that it is a brief explanation about the POSTCODE and its PURPOSE. (Not the purpose I explained in the preceding paragraph) However not forgetting to mention, "now it is mandatory" to provide the POSTCODE "in every piece of mail" that you post, and warning you of dire consequences for failure to do so including the loss of your letters. Is there anything more funny than, asking us to use a non-existent POSTCODE.

I believe the SLP owes to its customers a definite explanation of its stand on non-using the POSTCODE and there is no better time than now to do it. I also take this opportunity, to congratulate the SLP for being able to host the APPU Ex- Co meeting here next month.

Raja Wickramasinghe
(Retired Deputy Post-Master General)
CANADA