KENDRAPARA: In a fast-spreading digital world of the Internet and mobile phones, post offices may have become obsolete but not for villagers of Gagua. Such is their steadfast faith in the good old postal system that the residents of this village of Kendrapara have built a one-room pucca post office by pooling in their own money.
The new post office building, which has come up in place of the old mud-walled thatched hut, was unveiled on Wednesday. “The thatched house in which the post office functioned was on the verge of collapse. Last year, we started motivating local people to donate funds to build a pucca house. Many donated generously and we were able to complete the post office building at a cost of Rs 2 lakh,” said villager Niranjan Bal who donated Rs 5,000 for the new building.
Established in 1927, the post office has been serving villagers of rural areas for the last more than nine decades. Gagua is famous for being the birthplace of noted singer Bhikari Bal, popularly known as Bhajan Samrat. Villagers said Bal used to visit the post office regularly.
“We requested the postal authorities several times to grant money to build a proper building for the post office but to no avail. We then decided to solve the problem ourselves and constructed the building from our resources,” said Prahallad Tripathy, another villager.
Former postmaster Harish Chandra Samal said, as courier services are restricted to cities, people in villages still write letters besides sending and receiving money through money orders. This act of villagers should be an eye opener for the district administration and politicians, he added.
Postmaster of Gagua Basanti Murmu expressed her gratitude to the locals and said villagers built the new building in a span of only three months as they still trust the time-tested postal system. Around 500 villagers have passbooks in the post office.
Contacted, assistant superintendent of Kendrapara postal sub-division Debashis Satapathy said out of 310 rural post offices in the district, at least 100 have no permanent buildings. In many villages, postmasters run the extra departmental branch post offices either in their own house, on gram panchayat office premises or in school buildings.
The authorities provide a meagre amount of Rs 250 monthly for maintenance of rural post offices. Besides, since rural postmasters are not permanent employees, the Postal department pays them a monthly allowance of Rs 12,000.