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Postmen pedalling hard to deliver
By Nalaka Nonis
Sri Lanka is one of the few countries in the Asian region that boasts of an efficient postal service. Postal employees are hard pressed to maintain this record and do so in the midst of many difficulties to which the government has yet to respond realistically.

Postmen who are tasked with the responsibility of delivering mail safely to the recipients are those who are badly affected. Though the number of people who receive mail has risen in quick succession in the last few years, no additional postmen have been recruited to replace a depleting cadre.

According to the delivery beat revision system an additional 1,507 postmen are needed to meet the increasing demand. The approved cadre of postmen required for the country is 7,278 with a daily mail volume of between 1.3 and 5 million.

There is a shortage of postmen for urban areas where there has been a marked increase in the population and the expansion of business establishments.

While the Colombo Municipal Council area is in immediate need of additional postmen, Battaramulla, Nugegoda, Dehiwala are among the several other areas running short of postmen.

Kandy, Kurunegala, Galle and Matara districts have also been identified as areas in need of more postmen if letters are to be delivered in time and more efficiently.

A postman is given a 26-kilometre beat on a working day for the distribution of mail. The bigger workload and the time spent by a postman who works in a populous and commercial area is much more than the workload of a postman in a less populous area. However both individuals should cover a specified 26-kilometre beat on any working day.

Postmen who specifically work in Colombo and the suburbs complain they have found it very difficult to cover their stipulated beat on a daily basis because the number of houses and commercial establishments has increased by leaps and bounds.

Posts and Telecommunication Union President Navaratne Bandara said recruitment to the postal service including that of postmen have not been made since the 1990s.

Given the shortage of postmen, a single worker in some areas in Colombo has been forced to cover as much as 1000 houses a day and this has resulted in delays in mail delivery to recipients of letters. (see the box story)
One problem faced by postmen is the poor condition of the bicycles used in delivering mail and the other is to do with their allowance.

The normal practice is for the Government to either give bicycles to postmen or to give them a monthly allowance of Rs.100 for maintaining the bicycles if owned by them.

However postmen complain that this allowance is only a pittance which has not been increased since the 1980s and the Government is yet to replace some 10,000 bicycles as promised by the government after the postmen struck work in September last year.

Post Master General Shervin Senadira told The Sunday Times that his department had obtained Cabinet approval for recruiting new postmen but the Treasury was still to approve it.

He said they were considering the introduction of a dual system where postmen who work in highly populous areas can cover shorter distances than the usual 26-kilometre beat daily while those who work in less populated areas continue to cover the stipulated beat. Mr. Senadira said he plans to encourage business premises to set up mail boxes to allow postmen to help save time by delivering mail to one central point.

He said he hoped to give rebates to such business establishments. Mr. Senadira said that despite difficulties faced by postal workers, Sri Lanka’s per capita letter posting indicator was very high compared with some other countries in the region.

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