Ha! Very cool, I guess I never considered how mail would be handled in a country with low literacy rates. I guess I figured you would just find your literate relative :-)

I wonder if they sing it for a fee, too...

Do they still have the typewriter booths in local markets to write letters for people? Has that gone digital now with laptops/printers? Or have literacy rates got to where most people can find a relative to write a letter?

Just wondering.

Wouldn't it be a LOT cheaper in the long run just to teach them to read?

Who says they aren't offering programs to learn to read? Even if you went on a literacy campaign and made it a crime to be unable to read & write, you'd still have a transitional period, in which case services exactly like this one would be valuable.

Yes, but that transitional period would be short enough that people wouldn't report (as the OP did) there being a persistent, indefinitely continuing practice of mailmen reading out mail to rural villagers.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them think.

Only if they get a LOT of mail.