The Postman Rings

Ishara JAYAWARDANE

The first National Stamp Fair 2010 came to an end on November 25 at the Postal Headquarters. The event was organized by the Postal authority.

Philatelic Society of Sri Lanka President Johanne Dekker was present at the occasion to enrol new members and promote the hobby.

Johanne said that all the displays are from society members and these are their exhibits. The Philatelic Society was invited by the Postal Authority to come and exhibit their items.

"For the first time in the history of banking, we jointly introduced a product called 'Smile' with the Postal Department. National Savings Bank (NSB) had a very close relationship for a long time with the postal department. This product can be opened from all the NSB branches and all the sub post offices and post offices.

"We are having connections with sub post offices situated in remote areas. Any one, adults, children over 16 and minors, can open this for Rs 100. We are having a draw quarterly, after six months and at the end of the year and giving a number of prizes," NSB stall organizer Padmasiri Gunawardene said.

Gunawardene also added that the main objective of this product is that they want to ask everyone in this country from remote areas to the city - to save some money and have a savings habit that should be inculcated. That is why we have gone to remote areas with this connection to the postal department.

St. Jude's Stamp Centre's Kingsley Quentin runs a stamp centre for children in remote areas. Kingsley said these children cannot get stamps from their post offices, so he regularly sends stamps and necessary things by post. Other than that we are running a stall at Vihara Maha Devi park during the weekends. We are charging a small amount because we are not getting funds or grants from the Government. We were invited by the Philatelic Bureau and the Postal Department.

"This is the first National Stamp exhibition to be held in Sri Lanka. In the past few days there were some programs for school children and we issued stamp souvenir sheets. We are planning on to have more fairs in the future," said Publicity Officer Channa Munasinghe.

At the exhibition there were a selection of old coins. The presence of these coins was explained by Johanne Dekker. "The reason I put the coins here was because most stamp collectors collect coins and most coin collectors collect stamps.

So I put the coin and the stamps together because those have been issued simultaneously. For 60 years the army conception they issued a stamp and a coin, so I put both together because it is attractive and unusual."