Tag: India Post

India Post to offer postal ID cards for address proof

Posted by | Sep 24, 2008 | |

The Postal Department will issue identity cards (ID), carrying the home address, to city residents from the second week of October.

To begin with, the new ID cards will be issued in Chennai and later in two tier cities, said M S Ramanujam, Post Master General, Chennai region.

It will be similar to a smart card. Priced at Rs.210 (USD 4.50) , it will have a hologram of India Post and the photograph of the cardholder. The ID card will have details of the person’s blood group and identification marks.

The cards are well-laminated and tamper-proof. They will be issued by the postmaster of the head post office and will be valid for three years.

The card is aimed at helping those who are new to the city, senior citizens, job seekers and others applying for gas and telephone connections.

The postal department will provide bona fide proof of address for them. It is up to the different agencies to accept it. On change of address, the card will be cancelled, Ramanujam said.

The department is also considering collection of electricity bills through the post office.

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India Post gets new logo

Posted by | Sep 23, 2008 | |

India Post launched a new logo that will now be seen across all post offices and postal services of the country.

The changed corporate logo for the Department of Posts was launched by Union Minister of Communications and IT, A Raja.

Raja announced that India Post will very soon acquire a number of aircrafts to carry letters, parcels and logistic consignments for making overnight delivery in major towns of the country.

He also announced a host of new customer services to be launched by India Post very soon. These will include express parcel post retail service, gift parcel post service, logistics post air service, sale of gold coins through retail post, express money order service, speed post call centres and a range of new international services.

These new age post offices are meant to serve as a window to the world for the common man, “Aam Aadmi”, by focusing on their needs. By the end of the current year, 500 such post offices will get operational in the country. Strict adherence to the timelines is part of the strategy.

These post offices are being given a thorough make over both in terms of “physical look and feel” and upgrading service delivery through IT -enabled procedures.

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India Postal dept to write off PIN system

Posted by | Aug 13, 2008 | |

The department of post (DoP) proposes to introduce postal address locator (PAL) to replace the existing postal index (PIN) code. The DoP plans to make the PAL code, the standard universal post code. The existing PIN code system is getting outdated and tedious as it is primarily based on delivery post office (DPO) and not on geographical location, wherein a unique code is permanently allotted to a location.

Moreover, incomplete PIN code is of no use. In India, a district is the most well known administrative or geographical entity and since no code is allotted to a district in the PIN code system, it appears to have destroyed the district based sorting, which was the norm before 1972 when PIN was first introduced, he added. “In the new PAL code system, a unique code has to be allotted to each geographical location including village, town, locality, building, street, road, zone and city. Each digit in the code has to denote some location and most importantly, any addition of digits to the code must lead to simplification of solution and not compounding the problem,” the official noted.

The official also said that the intellectual property right for the concept and design on the PAL code is with the DoP and that no postal administration across the world could adopt it for its postal code without the prior consent of the DoP. He said, “We are undergoing a major transformation. What we need is ‘appropriate technology’ including integrated postal software, networked post offices, GPS-based mail van fleet and a fleet of aircraft for quick transmission of mails between cities and states.” He also said that if the proposal gets through, the process of introducing the PAL code will barely take 2-3 months.

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500 post offices to be upgraded

Posted by | Aug 3, 2008 | |

Five hundred post offices across the country will be upgraded under a special project to be launched later this month, Minister of State for IT and Communication Jyotiraditya Scindia said here Saturday. Addressing mediapersons here, Scindia spoke about the proposed facelift of postal network under project Arrow, which would be inaugurated Aug 16-17.
He said a proposal was chalked out for modernization of the postal department.
Scindia said that the human resource development ministry had accepted the demand of granting priority to children of rural postmen in admission to central schools.
He also spoke about plans to install additional towers, catering to both the CDMA and GSM systems, in Madhya Pradesh to improve the mobile telephony network and added that broadband services would soon be made available in each district of the state.

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Making India Post dynamic and profitable

Posted by | Jul 21, 2008 | |

Over the past few years, the Department of Posts and subsequently India Post has been undergoing significant changes, adapting to the new market environment. It is now the turn of the young Minister of State for Communications and IT Jyotiraditya Scindia to do his bit to push this exercise forward.

Over the past five years, India Post has evolved. The network of over 1.5 lakh post offices across the country, with over 80 per cent of them in remote and far-flung areas, has also become the retail outlet for a variety of financial instruments and even pre-paid cards of cellular phones. In the season, one can see long-winding queues at post offices — to buy the Public Service Commission application forms of the Central and State governments.

Postal savings, small savings, and the public provident fund have remained a major attraction for sections of the people, over decades. When the private courier service came into the country, the Department of Posts faced a major threat.

But it was soon able to refashion its functioning and introduce both a Speed Post and a Business Post to cater to a special clientele. Unfortunately, some of these services proved costlier than the private operators.

But the time to take the exercise forward has come. While the first priority may be to meet the competition, the consultants are sure to find out that utilising and harnessing the unparalleled network of post offices may be the solution.

A lot of the governments’ services and payments could easily be made through this network, with which the rural people can more easily identify — ultimately, aside from the Village Headman, it may be only the postman or now the post-woman who can easily identify every citizen in his or her area of coverage.
New mechanism

The challenge now may be to meet those commitments and yet become profitable by diversifying business and generating more revenue.

With the growth of the Internet, e-mails, and e-governance, broadband connectivity at post offices can surely be a means of generating business. If people do not find the time or inclination to write or print personal or business letters any more, they cannot be blamed.

In the age of communication revolution, e-mails and SMS may make such ancient forms of communication irrelevant. So, the post offices have to accept and adapt this method of communication and use it to transfer not just information, but also enable financial transactions — such as an instant money order.

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