Express News Service | 09th October 2016
V P Seethamani, post master of Vembanad Kayal post office, is engrossed in her work | Express
KOTTAYAM: Rain or blazing sun. Flood or scorching summer. V P
Seethamani turns up for duty at 10.30 am - either on a country boat or
on foot at Vembanad Kayal post office at R-Block, a reclaimed land at
the southern tip of Alappuzha district. It’s a ritual for her for the
last 27 years.
An extra department employee (ED), the 51-year-old Seethamani,
hailing from the eastern side of R-Block, has kept alive the traditional
channel of communication in the era of smart phones, email, Facebook
and Whatsapp. She is the post master. But that’s not a hindrance for her
to manage the routines of the post office - from delivering mail to
doing all the office chores. But even after that, Seethamani is still
not a permanent employee of the department and only her employment
category has changed - from ED to Gramin Dak Sevak (GDS). But she has
not given up. Seethamani is taking a departmental test on World Postal
Day on Sunday.
It’s a tough task she has been managing close to three decades. The
Vembanad Kayal post office (PIN 688006), established in 1972, perhaps is
the only post office functioning in a lake in the country. Unlike in
many other post offices, this office still depends on waterways for
bringing and despatching mail and fetching other necessary materials.
“We receive mail from the Alappuzha-Kottayam passenger boat at 12.30 pm
and despatch the same via Kottayam-Alappuzha boat at 2.15 pm,”
Seethamani said. The post office activities have changed in the modern
era with a sharp dip in ‘letter’ communication, she said.
“We get only 4-5 letters a day. However, there is an increase in the
e-money order services, savings bank and recurring deposits and in the
number of customers of postal life insurance schemes and Sukanya
Samridhi project,” she said.
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