This has reference to the letter written by Mr. A. R. de Silva and published in ‘The Island’ of October 2 under the above heading. I agree with the views expressed therein. There should have been a response from the PMG and as usual it has been hot.

The Philatelic Bureau is notorious for issuing postage stamps with errors. The reasons obviously are incompetency of officials in the Philatelic Bureau and the failure to take disciplinary action against them by the PMG.

On the other hand the President of the All Ceylon Buddhist Congress, Mr. Sudath Devapura has said that he saw the error and advised the officials not to release the stamp. If that be so it was wrong to have released the stamp with the error BC instead of BE. In fact it should be withdrawn from circulation at least now.

Perhaps the stamp with the error may have philatelic value years later as no country puts into circulation, stamps with errors other than Sri Lanka.

The Minister of Posts should look into this and take deterrent action against those responsible to avoid such careless mistakes at least in the future.
G. Siriwardena
Dehiwela