A FICTIONAL date - 'March 32' - which appeared on mail sent from Post Offices 5 and 13 in Košice was caused by machine failure, according to Andrea Pivarčiová, spokesperson for Slovak Post, the SITA newswire reports.
"After a minute investigation, Slovak Post found that these events were not caused by the deliberate action of our employees, but rather by the technical failure of our rubber stamping machines," Pivarčiová explained. "We can confirm that mail stamped as handed in on March 32, 2008, was in fact handed in on March 31. We can also confirm that items handed in at the Košice 13 post office, on which the date 'March -1, 2008,' was stamped, were in fact handed in on March 31, 2008."
The mix-up almost caused problems for a public official who sent his property return to the Slovak Parliament. The envelope carried the 'March 32' stamp. The committee decided to launch a probe for which the public official would have had to prove that he had sent the return in time, and that its apparently late despatch was not just an administrative failure.
