We all know many hands make light work, but Canacona post office just cannot do enough work, primarily because it does not have enough hands on the desk!
Over the years, Canacona post office, with eight branch offices, finds itself inundated with work and now desperately seeks additional manpower to ease the burden that has snail-paced their speed for some time now.
In fact, the situation seems grim during peak hours and tourist season, where the limited staff find it difficult to keep pace with the work load.
Fortunately with advent of technology the main work of distributing letters had drastically come down but new responsibilities and reduced number of staff has put additional pressure on those serving at the post office.
In addition to the postmaster there are only two postal assistants, when essentially three were required to undertake various works, including booking of registered AD letters, parcels, speed post, rural postal life insurance, opening of postal bags, saving bank transactions and other related work.
Apart from the above regular work there is also passenger reservation counter of the Indian Railways which too is being operated by the postal staff.
Besides, the workload that pours in from the eight branches become unmanageable during tourist season and at times when there are heavy bookings of parcels. To make matters worse, there is also additional load of mutation letters related to Mamlatdar office, school insurance, recurring deposits and saving transactions.
A customer, Khushali Desai, a senior citizen who was in praise of the work done by the staff, said there is an urgent need of an additional staff at the post office, as people sometimes lose patience if made to stand in queue for longer duration. In many cases the staff at the counter had to bear the brunt of angry customers.
An official at the Senior Superintendent of post office at Mapusa on condition of anonymity told this correspondent that they were aware of the shortage of staff and were trying out different possibilities, including hiring outside hand to ease the situation arising out of staff shortage.
