Kolkata: No one to receive mail, PO turns store room

KOLKATA: Durga Pithuri Lane and Shyakra Para Lane — two iconic localities in north Kolkata — have ceased to be postal addresses, with hundreds of undelivered mails addressed to residents piling up at the Bowbazar sub post office and nearby offices of private courier agencies for the last fortnight. Over 130 postal mails are lying at the post office beside Central Metro station with postmen taking them out for delivery but returning with the same every day since majority of the houses have been evacuated and are inaccessible.
To handle the crisis, the post office has taken up a unique initiative — they have put up banners and posters around the building-collapse zone and at the special control room at Goenka College of Commerce and are asking the displaced residents to submit a letter before the postmaster with their current address and phone number so the postman can deliver the items at that address. Even the 21 hotels that the residents have been put up in can be their current addresses.
“We empathise with the pain and trouble the residents are going through. Many of them have lost all documents, like bank passbooks and debit cards, which reach them via post. Hence, we are asking them to come to the post office and submit their current addresses. Even if they fall outside our jurisdiction, we will try to deliver there or call them up,” said postmaster Pradip Kr Chakraborty.
One of the banners on the Goenka College premises reads, “All disaster-affected residents of Bowbazar area may kindly contact the postmaster of Bowbazar post office for postal problems like delivery of mails, money order payment and savings bank transactions.”
Postman Arabinda Mondal said he felt strange, as well as sorry, while passing by the area every day. “I go there every day, hoping to find someone I know by face to hand over a letter or parcel. The place has become eerie,” he said.
The norm is to retain mail for a week and post them back to the sender if the addresses are unavailable. “We are making an exception in this case. We are keeping all the mail and the recipients can collect them from the post office showing a document — even the missing documents GD they are to file with the police will do,” Chakraborty added.
Durga Pithuri Lane resident Jayanta Seal was the first to respond to the call and submit a letter to the postmaster, informing him about their current address — a hotel on Ganesh Chandra Avenue. “It’s a laudable initiative in this time of crisis,” Seal said.