KARACHI, Nov 16: The Pakistan Post Office has around 450 letter-boxes in the city whose population is nearly 14 million.

PPO officials said that the number of letter-boxes had been going down over the years. They recalled that initially there had been 600 letter boxes in the city. They added that though the department had removed dilapidated letter-boxes from the pavements of the city, it had not replaced them with the new ones.

The PPO officials told Dawn that as a rule of thumb the city should have one letter-box for every 5,000 people. They added that two letter-boxes should be at the very least two kilometres apart, located at spots easily accessible to people.

By this calculation, the city should have some 2,800 letter boxes.

They recalled that more than two years ago, the PPO had made plans to increase the number of letter boxes to 600. According to the plan, this exercise was supposed to be completed within a month.

The officials said the PPO had introduced a mail motor service in the city in the late 1980s. The service had been started in view of a large number of complaints regarding delay in the dispatch and delivery of mail throughout Karachi.

They pointed out that a private contractor cleared all the letter-boxes of the PPO once a day. They added that the PPO could improve its services a lot by clearing out the letter-boxes at least twice a day and installing more letter-boxes in the city.

Observers maintain that in view of the cases of mail theft from letter-boxes, people prefer to walk to the nearest post office to drop their mail, fearing that postmen will either misplace their mail or peel stamps off envelopes.

The PPO officials contended that the people had stopped using the letter-boxes not because they feared that the letter boxes would be cleared out by someone else or stamps would be stolen by postmen but because they thought that they would save on time if they dropped their letters at the nearest post office.

Analysts point out that by setting up more letter boxes the PPO will actually do itself a favour because it will increase its revenue. They add that then the PPO will not have to earn money by taking counter-productive measures such as increasing postal tariff. It may be recalled that on April 1, 2001 the PPO increased the postal tariff by 100 per cent in an effort to pull the organization out of financial straits.