Mumbai GPO mistakenly bans mail to Washington

mumbai: mumbai postal service seems to worry more about protecting residents of washington d.c. than the new us director of homeland security. so, if you want to rush a birthday card, or even a university application to washington d.c., the express mail service (ems) clerk at the mumbai general post office (gpo) will turn you down, saying that he is prohibited from accepting any mail to the us capital.sounds bizarre? it's just a reflec-tion of the great indian bureaucracy. inquiries revealed that indeed ems or speedpost deliveries to the us capital were suspended by the us postal service for a couple of days last november, after the first outbreak of anthrax attacks around america. however, this suspension was lifted after 10 days, once the us discounted the threat of a mail-based epi-demic. but the message did not trickle to the rank and file at the mumbai gpo, which continues to believe that delivery to washington d.c. remains suspended. what is even stranger is that the us authorities had suspended delivery only to washington d.c. areas covered by postal codes 202 through 205_—_the area occupied by us government offices. zealous staff of the mumbai gpo extended the ban to the entire city of washington d.c. a letter by the universal postal union from berne dated november 20, 2001, to ems co-operative mem-bers states, due to current operat-ing conditions and government security measures, the us postal service has temporarily suspended delivery of ems items... please take note of this temporary suspen-sion and inform your customers accordingly. a subsequent letter from the universal postal union dated november 30 announced the restoration of speedpost service to washington d.c. however, this time round, even though the letter seems to have followed the same route, its contents were either not passed on or not implemented by postal service staff. while officials from leading courier companies were not available for comment, it is likely that their companies were the ones to benefit by this goof-up by the indian postal service. not to mention more traffic on e-card sites on the web.