People in rural areas of Natore are suffering a lot as the branch post offices are failing to provide necessary postal services to them. Contrary to the city dwellers, villagers are still very much dependent on branch post offices for their various postal needs such sending and receiving letters, parcels, job interview cards, and appointment letters.
Services in the branch offices are almost non-existent depriving the villagers of their needs. All the 81 branch post offices in Natore are in a sorry state forcing the office staffs to provide the service from their convenient locations. Moreover, staffs of the branch offices are leading inhumane life because of meagre government allowance.
There are three categories of post offices in Natore - district post office, the upazila post office and branch post offices.
There are around 24-25 staffs in the district post offices with better wages and benefits. However, there are only three extra-departmental (ED) staffs for each branch offices with minimum allowances. An ED post master gets Tk1260 a month while ED runner gets Tk1180 and ED post man receives Tk1230.
Given the continuous price hike of essentials, the ED service holders are facing various problems to maintain their families. Finding no other way, they pursue other income sources and fail to provide services to the people.
Moreover, many of the branch post offices remain shut as their condition is not suitable for running an office. Hence, many post masters work from various other places of convenience.
Rezaul Karim Reza, accountant of Natore district post office said, there are 81 branch post offices in the district. Among them, 16 are in Natore sadar upazila, 12 in Naldanga, 17 in Singra, 11 in Bagatipara, 11 in Baraigram, 7 in Gurudaspur and 7 in Lalpur upazila.
Abdur Rahim, a resident of Bagatipara upazila said, Tomaltola post office had been shut for almost 4 years. The post master provided services from his own shop at Tomaltala bazar.
“There has been no post man here for a long time. We could not send or receive our necessary documents. The post master did not send our letters. The government is losing revenue here for the want of adequate services in this sector,” he added.
Abul Kalam Azad, post master of Tomaltala post office confirmed the closing of the post office and said, he already had urged the authority to take steps to reconstruct the office but got no response.
“Finding no other way, I run the services in this shop,” he said.
When contacted, Ashit Kumar, deputy post master general of Rajshahi region said, they had to do everything as per government directive.
The ED job holders urged the government to change their honorary allowance into departmental salary and turn the post offices into modern service centres so that they can provide a better service to the villagers as per their demand. This will enable the government to earn a lot of revenue as well.