In 1961, as soon as my Form Five results were announced I walked up to the General Post Office, met the Controller of Posts, showed him my Form Five results and inquired if there was an opening for me. He said
“Yes!”, but the vacancy was in Sitiawan a town 60 miles away from my home. I told him, yes I don’t mind the distance and so I prepared to go over to my first formal employment. My mum was a very resourceful person looked up her memory bank and found a contact in Sitiawan who were prepared to accommodate me. She accompanied me to Sitiawan to ensure that I was safe in the new place.
My mum’s contacts were her former students when she was teaching in a private school at Ipoh.They were rubber tappers with two young children of their own. Before going to work the husband and wife would be busy preparing meals for themselves and their children who would be left in the Child Care Centre run by the estate. The Centre was a huge shed with half raised timber walls and capable of accommodating 20 children mostly Tamils with a sprinkling of Malay children who in no time picked up the Tamil language. The quarters provided by the estate was a wooden house in a row of 4 houses. It was in good repair as the maintenance team in the estate went around the houses in the mornings. The toilets were located a few metres away from the houses and were largely of the bucket system where the buckets are removed each morning and replaced with fresh buckets by conservancy workers engaged by the estate. I found the toilets were a bit archaic and used them infrequently preferring to use the facility provided at the Post Office.The toilet at the Post Office was the pit latrine type where a 6-10 ft hole was dug ,
surrounded by wooden walls and a wooden door. Once the pit was half full the hole was closed with earth and the structure including the door was shifted to its new location a few feet away.
As I worked at the Post Office I had good opportunity to know other government servants working in Sitiawan at the the same time. They were helpful guys and introduced me to the Indian restaurant who provided 5 meals a day including tea breaks at 10.00 in the morning and another at 3.00pm.All these for RM40 a month. After paying for my meals and a contribution of RM50- to my family in Ipoh; I was left with RM10/-for my entire month’s expenditure. Another friend from Ipoh said he was living with a few bachelors at a disused Hospital ward located on the fringes of the town and said he had discussed my move to a vacant room at the Hospital ward and the other inmates did not have any objections and so I moved into the vacant room where I did nor have to pay any rent except my share for payment for utilities. The job I had was a temporary job until pending confirmation by the Public Services Department.
My first place of employment was the Post Office Sitiawan. The Postmaster who was my boss had some unorthodox training system. He handed me an album of new stamps of various denominations, pointed to an empty chair facing the counter and said go and sell these stamps. There was another clerk who was an experienced one manning the money order counter. As I looked around helpless, the senior clerk suggested I get the help of one of the postmen who could assist when they are free. I welcomed this assistance and began my work of selling stamps with the help of a postman. At the end of the day we had to tally our books. If there was a shortage we have to make good the shortfall from our wages at the end of the month.
I found that I was having a shortage of exactly RM5/- per day. It did not strike me as strange that loss was RM5 no more no less. I indicated to my senior clerk my predicament. He suggested that it was nothing to worry about.
This was the time where there was a shortage of sugar in China and the local Chinese would send sacks of sugar to their relatives in China in small cotton bags of one to two kilos. The cost of the sugar was around 30 cents depending on the size of the bag. The postage would come up to RM5- RM8 depending on the weight. He suggested I paste 5 one cent stamps on each sack, punch the stamps with half the marks on the sack and the other half on the stamps then pull off the 5 one cent stamps. I would make RM4.95. After a day or two I mastered the technique and started to make money enough to take my colleagues for tea at the mamak stall. They were happy days until my friend working in the Parcels Office in Ipoh, told me of his strange findings among the parcels received by his office. A few bags had no stamps though the parcels indicated there had been stamps and stamp marks. I had to honestly tell him what was going on.
Fortunately I succeeded in obtaining a job in a different Department, in the next few months and thus ended my journey of crime before I could be found out.
#memoriesofayoungman #mynameisgana
content (c) Ganapathy Ramasamy, mynameisgana.blogspot.com
Comments
Post a Comment