KARACHI, Dec 16: The Pakistan Post Office has changed the colour of its letter-boxes from yellow to red.

The deputy postmaster general of Sindh, Fazle Sattar Khan, told Dawn on Saturday that the PPO would receive some 150 letter-boxes shortly. He added that almost all the letter- boxes in the city had been coloured red. He also urged people not to disfigure the letter-boxes by pasting posters to it.

After the addition of 150 letter-boxes, the total number of letter-boxes in the city would become 550.

Sources told Dawn that for a city having a population of more than 13 million the number of letter-boxes was not enough. They added that as a rule of thumb the city should have one letter-box for every 5,000 people and two letter-boxes should be at the most one kilometre apart, located at spots easily accessible to people.

The sources said that because of rampant mail theft people generally preferred to walk to the nearest post office to drop their mail, fearing that postmen would either misplace the mail or peel stamps off envelopes.