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| Tuesday, 4 November 2003 |
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Our poor rupee is in the postman's purse Facts Are Stubborn by Anton Gunasekera Hardly a week passes by, without our nation's print medium staff journalists and provincial correspondents, dauntlessly exposing the spate of daily postal thefts of registered parcels and registered letters, not excluding ordinary enveloped mail to Sri Lankan citizens and to temporary expatriates. We news-reported a few years ago, one-time Postmaster General Soma Kotakadeniya, who previously cleansed the open bribery and corruption at the office of the Registrar of Motor Vehicles, as telling the 'Daily News' that there is undetectable sinister connivance and conspiracy among the lower grade postal sorters and the higher grade sorter-supervisors who are well-versed in the secret art and science of sorting out the foreign mail parcel or letter which contains immediately convertible foreign currency notes and gullible bank drafts to Sri Lankan Rupees. PMG (Mrs.) Kotakadeniya tried her best to track down the treachourous trail of sorter and sorting supervisor at the GPO and provincial sorting offices, by summoning CID in civvies, through the intervention of her understanding and honest husband, Deputy Inspector General of Police, affable Kotakadeniya of Wijithapura, to cleanse the postal fraud to sort out the sinister sorters and their scheming supervisors. But, together, they were, and are, smarter than the white-clad civilian CID. They produced 48 registered parcels and letters, with wrong addresses to Sri Lankan offices and homes; asked the investigating CID-ers:" "Do not know that there is a 'Controller, Investigations, 'under our PMG, who watches our sorting eyes from a corner of his eyes? The public can make false complaints against us for stealing cheques, drafts and foreign currencies. We do our daily duty with a clean conscience". That was the end of a sordid 'sorter' story. But, thereafter, they gave enough headaches to the first-ever unyielding PMG. Life's strangulated young Sri Lankan men and women leave for distant shores in search of greener pastures. In their thirsty search for a new abode to make some money, they leave their loved ones to send home part of their hard-earned earnings to fend for their fallen families. They wait in anxiety, far from home, to hear the 'Good News' that the long-awaited currency did come by Foreign Mail to buy 'Daily bread'. But, no. - the unscrupulous sorter and the bell-ringing postman has decided to make merry with the sweat and toil of our brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, who sleep in their pillows with their heart and mind nestling in their humble homesteads, back in Sri Lanka. Everyday, the travelling postman in our near 3400 islandwide post offices and sub-post offices is delegated the responsible task by his postmaster to deliver to homes and offices, the parcels and letters that have been sent from foreign lands. But the parcel or letter hardly arrives through the scheming postman. |
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