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Post offices in Chennai appear to have run out of 50-paise post cards, the common man’s cheapest postal communication, worrying old timers who use these cards to send out new year season greetings.
“There is not even a single card in most of the post offices across the city,” said 70-year-old Lakshmi Narasimhan, who has visited a number of post offices in the city in the last couple of weeks to get a couple of hundred post cards.
“This is the first time in the last two decades that I did not send my season greetings for New Year due to scarcity,” he said.
Mervin Alexander, Postmaster General, Chennai city region, Tamil Nadu Postal Circle, said post offices in the city started to run out of post card stock two months ago as there has been some ‘indent’ problem in getting supply from the Stamp Depot in Hyderabad.
“Nobody brought to our notice this situation. We have placed an emergency indent for two lakh post cards and hope to receive it from Hyderabad next week,” he told Business Line .
On the demand for post cards, Alexander said at this time of the year, it is mainly bought by the elderly to send out season’s greetings. However, overall, there has been a drop in demand for post cards as bulk mailers do no longer use them for marketing. Bulk mailers are using electronic medium, he said.
For instance, sale of post cards across the country dropped to 77 crore in 2010-11 from 86 crore in 2006-07. The declining trend will continue. The next option is the ‘inland letter,’ he said.
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