The Island – Editorial:
The sinking Postal Department is on a luxury cruise, as we reported yesterday. On the World Post Day, which fell last Saturday, the postal big guns had a shindig aboard a ship called Jetliner. Trade unions are furious.
They point out that the Postal Department, which is incurring massive losses, must avoid such extravagance. Interestingly, they have likened Saturday’s bash to Nero’s fiddling while Rome was burning. Trade unionists may not be aware that it is now believed that Nero himself caused that fire to get rid of hovels and shacks in the areas where he lived so that he could expand his royal palace. Nevertheless, their analogy is appropriate in that the postal bigwigs are enjoying themselves, having ruined their institution. A local saying, in our opinion, may describe the situation better––neva gilunath ban choon (which roughly put into English means ‘the band plays on even while the ship is sinking’ a la the gallant musicians of the Titanic fame).
The Post Master General (PMG) has said funds of his department were not used to foot the bill, (a claim that trade unions have denied). If so, where did the money come from? Are we to assume that PMG happened to rub an ancient lamp that had come by parcel post and got stuck in his department decades ago and a genie popped up and took all postal big shots on a cruise? He owes an explanation to the public who continues to pay more, year in year out, for an ever worsening postal service. There is a move to close post offices on Saturday so that the losses of the Postal Department could be curtailed. Whose brilliant idea was it to have a soiree aboard a ship? Above all, it is said that many high ranking officials who had skipped an official function in the morning on that day were present in their numbers at the evening do on the ship. (Why didn’t the PMG have them all thrown overboard?)
Let’s now have a look at the ‘report card’ of the holier-than-thou postal unions berating their bureaucrats. They cannot lay the blame for the sorry state of affairs in the Postal Department entirely at the door step of top administrators and politicians. All of them––politicians, bureaucrats, trade unions and their followers–– must take the responsibility for having brought their department to this pass with no prospects of recovery in the foreseeable future.
Time was when the Postal Department used to provide a reliable service to the public under extremely difficult conditions. The whole country could depend on the Postal Department for business and personal communication and the system worked well. But today in spite of technological advancement and the availability of better infrastructural facilities, the postal service has, not to put too fine a point on it, gone to the dogs. Luckily, there are other means of communication freely available and people do not have to solely depend on the postal service.
There are many complaints of mail pilfering. Subscribers to foreign magazines and recipients of overseas mail will vouch for this fact. Postal unions and their members cannot deny that they are responsible for the inordinate delays, inefficiency, pilferage etc which have ruined their department over the years. They are only concerned about their rights and privileges to the neglect of their duties and responsibilities.
So, while thanking the postal unions for exposing political buffoons and their bureaucratic lackeys for squandering public funds, one cannot but urge the union bosses and their members to put their house in order and live up to public expectations. They are duty bound to do their utmost to turn the ailing Postal Department around as a modern outfit capable of meeting the present-day challenges. They cannot absolve themselves of their sins by hauling the errant administrators over the coals.