2017-10-04 Wed

India Post is taking a lot of efforts to create awareness and interest among children in philately. Very soon, children will be able to get postage stamps featuring their own photographs or their school premises. They would also be given an easy access to create a philatelic deposit account.

Philatelic promotion executives are visiting government and private schools to conduct informative workshops on the hobby of stamp collection. They would soon carry a mobile printer to issue personalised ‘My stamps’ to children during these workshops. School children would be connected to the nearest post offices for any other transactions. Children can open a philatelic deposit account in rupees 200 and get commemorative stamps and special covers delivered to their address.

There are almost 6,125 philatelic deposit accounts in Tamil Nadu. 3,650 accounts are in the philatelic bureau, Anna Road head post office, Chennai. Commemorative stamps are available across the counter for six months. Almost 50 commemorative stamps are released annually. 34 commemorative stamps have been released in 2017 so far, like the Ramayana, vulnerable birds and Deepavali stamps.

The ‘My Stamps’ program has been extended and is now offered in many more post offices in the State. Workshops have been conducted in 18 schools and almost 1,200 school students have participated in them. There are plans to conduct 100 such programmes by this year-end. Permanent exhibitions are also held at Anna Road HPO and themes are changed every month.