Postage increases

Last month, when I wanted to send a letter to the United States, I was aghast and perplexed when the post office employee told me that for a letter weighing up to 20 grams and from 21 grams to 50 grams the postage rates are Rp 15,900 and Rp 36,000 respectively. I could hardly believe what I was hearing and asked the employee to repeat her assertion because for Rp 36,000, I can buy 13 kilos of rice, or in other words, an increase of 1,000 percent, 10 times the previous rate of Rp 3,500 I usually paid.

In fact, the tariffs to other countries have also increased by 1,000 percent. This is absurd. If this goes on, I believe that not many people will send letters abroad.

After a week or so, I returned to the same post office and the usual hum of activity was lacking. Fortunately, the postage for domestic letters remains the same but it has come to my knowledge that telephone charges have also been raised. This means that telefax charges to foreign countries will also be raised; if my memory does not fail me, by 1,800 percent.

I dare say that with such tariffs, except for business enterprises and under urgent circumstances, no individuals will send letters abroad. In other words, we will be isolated from the outside world. A former colleague told me that she has been to all the bookstores in Jakarta to buy an Oxford Dictionary (English-English) for her high school student daughter, but no such book can be found.

I believe in the saying: Correspondence is the only means of maintaining an everlasting friendship with my friends abroad. When I met them five years ago, after an absence of more than four decades, I was received with a heartwarming welcome. I used to send letters to my friends abroad but alas, due to the above stated postal regulations, I have to abrogate my belief and stick to another motto: Out of sight, out of mind!

A. DJUANA

Jakarta