Leaking roof, potholes and puddles on the floor, and cracks on walls. We are not talking about an abandoned structure, but the office of the Railway Mail Service (RMS) at the Mangalore Central Railway Station, which among other things, claims to handle the largest bulk mail consignments in the country.
The over 4,000-sq ft. office located on the ground floor, first floor, and second floors of the Central Railway Station building stands quite in contrast to the main Railway Station building, which is well-maintained. The passage connecting RMS entry and the platform has become a thoroughfare endangering the safety of postal articles that are being sorted out on the ground floor.
The first floor, housing the computerised registration counter that handles registered posts and articles, and the second floor, housing offices of supervisory staff, have dilapidated walls, leaking roofs and puddles on the floor. Postal employees working in the RMS say this has been the situation for over a decade and repeated plea with their department higher-ups and the Railways had not helped much.
The RMS which generates lot of paper and other waste does not have a dedicated garbage disposal facility even as the Railways does not allow it to dump garbage at its facility, the staff say. Whenever it receives bulk mail from Manipal (in thousands of bags), it has to be dumped on the forecourt without any shelter endangering the safety of articles. “Often the Railway officials threaten through the Railway Protection Force to arrest us for dumping the baggage. It is sad to hear such threats from another government organisation,” said an employee.
A senior India Post official at the Circle Office in Bangalore said the Mangalore RMS was under deposit scheme wherein certain amount of deposit had been paid to the Railways. It was the responsibility of the Railways to maintain the building, he claimed. At the same time, India Post’s requests to allow taking up maintenance work on its own too were rejected, he claimed.
Anand Prakash, Divisional Railway Manager, Palakkad Division of Southern Railway, told The Hindu that India Post was free to undertake maintenance even as he rejected that Railways was in any way responsible for maintenance. “I have not received any request for maintenance during my six-month stint here,” he said.
