Chandigarh, May 21, 2015: A two-day conference of Heads of Circles of Post Offices of the country began at Gurgaon today, which was inaugurated by Secretary (Posts) Smt Kaveri Banerjee. Heads of all the 22 Circles of Postal Services are participating in the conference.
After formally inaugurating the Conference by lighting the traditional lamp, Kaveri Banerjee said that all the 1,55000 branches of post offices across the country will be connected through a single network and the branches will be digitized. She said, “We are trying to provide facilities of Core Banking Solutions (CBS) at the post offices”. She said that the post offices have a reliable network in the country and these can play significant role in socio-economic growth, particularly in rural hinterland.
She said that the Prime Minister believes that the Post Office can play a stellar role in furthering financial inclusion, both by upscaling life insurance initiatives and diversification of insurance products, and by intensifying efforts to encourage small savings with new products and facilities. She said that the government also believes that e-Commerce will be critical towards bridging the urban-rural divide and the Postal Services are in the best position to capture the e-delivery market. Smt Banerjee advised the Circle Heads to move very quickly on this front, to upscale their capabilities and to take over the business before other players step in and seize the opportunity to turn their fortune around, riding on the e-commerce boom which is set to grow exponentially in the coming years. She said that they must put in all their efforts to complete the IT modernization projects as quickly as possible, as this holds key to improving their capabilities for doing business on all fronts.
She said that during the last one year, the number of networked offices has increased to 27215 and the Disaster Recovery Center at Mysore has started functioning recently. The number of CBS offices has jumped from 236 to 2590, with over 14.55 crore accounts and Cash Certificates migrated to the new system. The figure includes 800 Head Post Offices and 1790 Sub Post Offices. According to Ms Banerjee, more than 100 ATMs have also been commissioned in Head post Offices. She said that in Haryana, one such ATM has been commissioned at Ambala and second ATM will be commissioned at Gurgaon shortly.
She said that the Post Offices have opened more than 43 lakh Sukanya Samriddhi Yojna accounts in the country and garnered investment worth Rs 2600 crore in a span of less than four months. Smt Banerjee said that physical delivery services will continue to be flag ship services of India Post. The efforts of Postal Services in upgrading parcel handling facilities have yielded an encouraging dividend in the form of over 36 percent growth in parcel revenue in last financial year. At the same time, she laid stress on the need to refocus attention on mails delivery and said that for effective monitoring of mails and parcel delivery and understanding practical problems at the ground level, it is imperative that all the officers visit Post Offices and Mail Offices, and do a physical check of mail and sorting arrangements, performance of the sorting staff and Postmen, and pending mails in every office.
She was of the view that “we need to pay immediate attention to the entire parcel handling chain, ramp up our system in double quick time, and aggressively market out parcel services to become the market leader”.
On the occasion, Chief Post Master General of Haryana Col Sukhdev Raj said that the CBS facility will be taken down to the village level branches and for this, training was being imparted to the staff. He said that in Haryana, there are 21 Head Post Offices, 490 Sub Post Offices and 2100 Rural Post Office Branches and in these a total of about 6500 employees were employed. He said that about 1.42 lakh accounts have been opened in Haryana under Sukanya Samraddhi Yojna till now. He said that ATMs will be installed in 16 Head Post Offices of the state in next two months.
The Secretary (Posts) also administered Pledge of ‘Anti Terrorism Day’ to all participants that they will oppose all forms of terrorism and violence and uphold as well as promote social harmony and fight the forces of disruption threatening human lives and values.
On the occasion, Members of the Postal Services Board Anjali Devarshar, Kalpana Tiwari, S K Sinha, A B Joshi, Ashutosh Tripathi, B Murthi, Chief Post Master General Col Sukhdev Raj and Director Posts of Gurgaon Rajul Bhatt were also present. / (SK Vyas, Jalandhar)