Paragraph on Visit to a Post-Office – by Shanu

Introduction:

A post-office is a place where postal services are made available to the people and where mail delivery is done between people and businesses in the country.

A post-office is usually housed in a red-painted building. A post office is one of the most useful and important institutions maintained by the Government of a country.

It carries out an assortment of activity like delivery and dispatch of money orders, parcels, registered letters, insured letters etc.

A Neatly Organized Institution:

The post office is a very well organized institution. On entering the premises of a post office, one can see the different departments to which the working of the whole Post office is divided into. One can find a number of different windows, each of which caters to a different kind of postal work. There is also a huge board attached to the wall on each side of the post office which lays down the general guidelines for the public, both in English and the vernacular language. There are seats for the public and usually a television playing news is attached to a corner.

Work of Different Departments:

1. Money Order Clerk:

At one of the windows, we can see the clerk who handles the money orders. The money order clerk accepts both the duly and unduly filled in money orders. After receiving the money order form, the clerk carefully peruses through it and then asks for the money which the sender has put down in the form of money order. The clerk has to count it carefully and he also has to collect the money order fee from the person applying for it. After carefully checking it, he hands over a duly stamped receipt to the sender which implies that the money order delivery is now the responsibility of the post office.

2. Parcel Clerk:

On another such window, we find the parcel clerk. The parcel clerk’s work is fairly simple and he does not work like that of a money order clerk. His work constitutes only delivering and receiving registered parcels. Those parcels which are not registered, he advises the senders to bring them back after registration.

3. Letters and Savings Bank Clerk:

There is another clerk who delivers and receives insured and registered letters. Special care has to be taken by this clerk to ensure that all the letters are properly sealed. There is another clerk who is in charge of the savings bank of the post office. He is also allotted another independent counter. In comparison with the savings bank employee of a bank, he has less work but his work also constitutes an important part of the functioning of the post office.

4. Stamp and Sorting Room:

There is a stamp room and a sorting room in the post office. The stamp room has postcards and envelopes for sale and usually the stamp vendor acts as a scribe for illiterate people. Parcels and letters received from various places are sorted in the sorting room.

Conclusion:

The post office is a great help to the general public. It carries letters from one end of the country to the other. The post offices have also taught the Indian citizenry the value of frugality. It is very difficult to function in the absence of such an institution.