MADINA: Post offices across Madina finally saw an end Sunday to the massive queues of Pakistanis wishing to send telegrams in response to a seemingly baseless rumor that brought returns of over SR1 million in telegram operations. According to Al-Watan Arabic daily, the previous five days had seen an estimated 21,000 Pakistanis head for post offices across the city, obliging police to beef up security and translators to be drafted in to attempt to quash the rumor. The rumor, the source of which remains unidentified but is being investigated by the police, concerned “unlimited” monetary grants to Pakistanis who send their personal details to a designated address. Priority was given, so the belief went, to persons communicating by telegram, an operation costing SR50. The Saudi Post Office was not the only beneficiary of the rumor, however, as a black market swiftly sprung up outside post office providing ready-written telegrams in both Urdu and Arabic for SR30 a time. Post Office staff said they were helpless, as Post Office regulations oblige staff to comply with customers' legal requests. “We tried to get people to understand that the rumors were most probably false,” said one employee. “We even brought in a translator to speak to them in Urdu, but they still continued to prefer to try their luck.” Regional Post Office chief Abdullah Al-Mazrou'i frowned at the suggestion that the rumor may have originated from the Post Office itself. “People who say that should prove it,” he said. “If any member of Post Office staff is shown to be involved in any way in the rumor then all regulatory measures will be taken against him.” He noted that his staffs are merely “middle-men”, executing procedures between sender and receiver. “It's not for them to be looking into the telegram sender or questioning the operation,” he said. “If an employee acts on an individual basis and refuses to comply with the request of a sender then he is regarded as having failed in his duties.” The rumors in Madina were not unprecedented. Over two days in early May Jeddah post offices made half a million riyals in telegram operations from persons responding to a rumor concerning “flood damage compensation” of SR5,000 from the government open to anyone from certain expatriate communities.
