Slow deliveries - by post

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 18 November 1997, 23:59 GMT]
More than twenty five thousand Sri Lankan postal workers began a work to rule campaign from today to protest against the proposed measures to convert the department into a public corporation.

Mail deliveries in Sri Lanka will get slowed down as a result of the 'work to rule' protest of the postal workers. The go slow campaign has been spear headed by the Union of Posts and Telegraph Officers (UPTO).

Most employees of Sri Lanka's Postal Services Department belong to this powerful union.

The government has been trying to prepare the ground for making the Postal Services Dept. a public corporation by cutting down several perks and means of income enhancement that have been available to government employees for decades under a welfare economy.

The World Bank and the IMF have stipulated the rationalisation of the government sector, meaning the retrenchment of a large work force in several key government departments.

The strike of the UPTO reflects fears in the large workforce that eventually the department would be privatised and thousands of them would be laid off.