India's Postal Service Board awaits government approval for its introduction of e-post, whereby customers take a letter, either handwritten or on floppy disk, to the post office, where it is scanned, then sent via the Internet to the
>From BUSINESS LINE, March 24th, 2001
ORIGINAL TITLE: E-post set for trial run in 5 States. FULLTEXT: R. Savitha
PUNE, March 23 WILL e-post change the pace of the snail mail? Yes it
would, with the implementation of the e-post facility in Maharashtra,
Kerala,
Andhra Pradesh, Goa and Gujarat, Col. V. Sadasivam, Pune Post
Master-General,
told Business Line. He said the Postal Services Board had approved the
project
for the launch of e-post services and the clearance from the Ministry was
awaited. The project was scheduled to commence operations within a month,
he
added. The first phase of this project would cover 200 e-post centres
spread over
5,000 delivery offices. Each State has been given 50 centres each, he
said,
while noting that Goa would fall under the jurisdiction of the Maharashtra
State. The national launch would follow soon, he added. He said the
Department of Posts had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU)
with an internet service provider (ISP) in February for the project
implementation in these five States. The ISP would provide the software
while
the postal department would take care of the delivery of these messages.
The
software would be available free of cost to these 200 centres, while the
department would make a minimal investment in buying scanners and modems
for
the postal departments which are already computer-linked. Col Sadasivam
noted that these 200 centres would also double up as centres for
accepting messages for transmission also. Customers can send the message
to
any of these e-post centres by giving their letter, either in a
handwritten
form or in a floppy, which would then be scanned and sent across to the
destination. He said that scanning was being done so as to give a
‘personal
touch to the letters’. These letters would reach the destinations within
24
hours, he added. ISSN 0971-7528; Page 9 Copyright 2001 The Hindu Business
Line (c) 2001 Resp. DB Svcs. All rts. reserv.
$$BUSINESS LINE, 24th March 2001
