Ananova:

A lazy postman took so long to deliver letters to a village some of the residents had died by the time they arrived.

People in Rzedziny in northeast Poland, couldn't understand why their letters failed to turn up at their destination.

When local resident Stanislaw Shchusev, 80, investigated further he was shocked to discover that the village postbox hadn't been emptied for five years.

He also found out that the local postman had not bothered to deliver hundreds of letters to local residents sent from people outside the village and instead had dumped them in a storeroom at the post office.

He said: "I was sending letters to my family abroad for nearly half a century - Christmas wishes and that sort of thing.

"But in the last few years I was surprised when they told me they hadn't received anything from me. I just assumed the letters had got lost in transit abroad somewhere. I never once realised that they were all still here in my village postbox."

Residents eventually decided to complain. "We checked out complaints from villagers near Szczeczin and, well, it turned out that there are a lot of unsent letters and cards," said Bozena Ziolecka from the regional post office.

When questioned, postman Wieslaw Zawoz, 39, said: "It's not my fault. First, I was on holiday. Another time a trainee lost the key to the postbox and I reported it but no one did anything. Another time I was sick."