Rush for Ganga water at post offices

Chennai: The Central government's new scheme of selling bottled Ganga water at post offices has lent cheer to devotees and cultural lovers, who thronged post offices to buy bottled Ganga water sourced from Rishikesh and Gangotri. The 520 sachets, which were sent to two major post offices in the city, ran out of bottles due to huge rush.

Anna Road head post Office and General post office at North Beach Road, which received the holy water, were unusually crowded on Tuesday. There was a huge demand for Ganga water with people buying multiple sachets to send it across to their relatives.

Talking to DC, C. Krishnan, a customer,    said that he would offer the water to their ancestors' crematorium. “Now that the access is easy, I did not think twice to buy the sachets.”  Many devotees were disappointed that Ganga water was available only in two post offices. “I wish the initiative was expanded to all other offices to cater the spiritual needs of many,” said G. Padmaja, a senior citizen.

Kumara Krishnan, Assistant Postmaster General, Business Development, Tamil Nadu Circle said that there has been tremendous response from the people for Gangajal. “We got around 520 bottles, which was sold out just two days’ time. Based on the demand, we have asked for another 6,000 bottles. We hope to sell more numbers of the holy water in the coming days,” he said.

It is an opportunity to publicise the newly introduced facilities like postal ATMs, he added. However, regular users of post offices say a different tale. V. Ramarao, a civic activist speaks out his experience regarding the poor infrastructure in post offices.

“The core banking system, which was introduced in January this year still faces several technical snags. Cardholders have to wait for more than two hours to make a transaction. How could we continue visiting post offices” he questioned.