The dependence that the family of a migrant worker has on its sole breadwinner sweating it out in some distant place is not hard to imagine. Nor is the distress and anguish when they find money he sent to them through insured letter missing in transit. But this is what is going on with alarming regularity here: money orders may be insured, but there is no guarantee of their safe arrival.

A number of illiterate labourers here save the hard way and send money to their families living in the Hindi heartland through insured letter mode. Since they are illiterate, they use services of public writers sitting outside post offices. The writer puts currency notes in the special envelope, seals it and hands it over to the post office in their presence. But a number of labourers come back saying the receivers did not get almost 80 per cent of the money when the envelopes were opened and so they returned the same to the sender.

Pappu Katheria from Jalalabad tehsil of Shahjahanpur district in Uttar Pradesh works at a process house in Narol. He had sent Rs 1,000 to his family, but when the latter opened the envelope, they found only one note of Rs 100.

Abdulbhai Irfan Ansari had sent Rs 5,000 to Dudhari village in UP (PIN 274302) on February 24. On March 12, he got back the envelope having only two notes of Rs 100! He had sent the money to cover expenses for a marriage in his family. “Now, what shall I do? This was my long-time saving,” he said.

These are a few of the two dozen-odd instances that took place only at one post office — Shah Alam Roza. The public writer, Nadeem Ansari, said he is sick of facing the situation time and again, as officials just don’t listen. “A senior official in the post office even said there was no use sending money orders, the money will not reach the destination,” he said when asked if any officials were approached.

The Postal Department is not even ready to believe the connivance of its staff. Officials at the department’s customer care centre sought to defend the department and suggested that the public writer might be siphoning off the money.

When told that the department’s officials were accepting that even post masters at the other end in UP were siphoned off money and that the postal staff was known to lend this money for short durations at high interest and then deliver the money if they came under pressure, they said if a complaint would be filed, things might be investigated.

Officials at the Chief Post Master General Gujarat Circle were too busy to respond, but Sachin Kishore, Director of Postal Services, Uttar Pradesh Circle, has taken a serious note of the matter.

“It is a really serious issue and I will have the matter investigated here in a couple of days ,” he said.