Post office in Balurghat functioning sans weighing machine

BALURGHAT: If you visit the sub post office in Balurghat’s Khadimpur school area in Ward 22, don’t be surprised if you are asked to visit the street side meat vendor or vegetable seller to get your letter or parcel weighed.

This post office has been operating without a weighing machine for the past six years, causing endless problems to the customers.

Following the lack of a weighing machine, the customers and the employees have to visit chicken stalls or vegetable vendors on the roadside to weigh their letters or parcels.

According to locals, even after the scheduled market hours, the butcher keeps his shop open just to weigh these letters and parcels from the post office. However, this service is rendered absolutely free-of-cost out of sheer humanity.

Mahadeb Mali, the local butcher, said: “This post office has no weighing machine. The customers and the office employees come to my shop to weigh letters and parcels.” As per rules, there should be a weighing machine inside the post office to determine how much money the customer will put on the ticket. As many as 149 post offices are running in South Dinajpur district. Most post offices still measure weight using old bar scales. Digital devices are also provided at a few of those post offices.

Partha Chaki, a local resident of Khadimpur, complained: “My nephew’s marriage will be held soon and that is why I went to the post office to mail the marriage invitation letters but surprisingly I saw that there was no weighing machine. One of the office employees tried to guess the weight of the letters so that I could fix stamps on them. Later I went to the butcher shop next door to find out the exact weight.”

Sanjay Sarkar, the postmaster of the office, said: “There has been no weighing machine in the post office for almost six years. The old device malfunctioned. We have no new digital machines. The whole matter has been reported to the higher authorities.”