Tag: India

The Joint Action Council (JAC) of recognised postal employees organisations has decided to call for an indefinite strike from April 24 to press its demands.

Talking to reporters here on Sunday, K. Raghavendran, national working president of the All-India Postal Employees Union P3 and V. Parthiban, Tamil Nadu circle secretary, said the demands included the constitution of a judicial committee to go into the working conditions and demands of the Gramin Dak Sevaks or rural postal employees and dropping of the move to close down post offices and privatise and out-source services.

Mr. Raghavendran said the Centre had announced the closure of 40 out of the 48 Railway Mail Service offices in Tamil Nadu. Only three in Chennai and five in the rest of the State would be retained. Under a new norm, those RMS offices handling less than 10,000 letters a day were to be closed down. This move, he claimed, would render many employees surplus, besides imposing a heavy workload on the staff members. Furthermore, the Centre had issued orders for opening 100 private post offices on a franchisee basis.

The JAC also opposed the Planning Commission’s announcement that no subsidy would be given to the Postal Department in the main budget from April 1, 2008.

Mr. Raghavendran alleged that the Centre was trying to project the department as loss-making on the grounds that the pension, amounting to Rs.1, 200 crore, was being paid from the department’s earnings, and that the department was, therefore, justified in closing down post offices to cut the expenditure.

While the pension for all other Central Government employees, including railway employees, was being paid from the Government’s Consolidated Fund, it was only in the case of the Postal Department that the pension was being drawn from the department fund. If the postal pensioners were also paid from the Consolidated Fund, the department could save Rs.1, 200 crore every year.

While on the one hand, the Government was saying that the Postal Department should stand on its own, on the other it was opening private post offices.

The Indian Postal Department has launched instant money order (IMO) service in the City after a successful trial on Thursday.
The new system offers twin benefits in that the fund transfer is faster and the upper limit of the amount has been raised manifold. The service has been initially started in two main post offices of the City – the GPO and town post office – and will soon be launched in 22 other post offices of the division, said department officials.
Under the new system, a person needs to fill up a form with details and addresses. Sums between Rs 1,000 and Rs 50,000 can be sent, and the charges range from Rs 150 to Rs 330. After collecting the cash, the post office issues a unique 16-digit IMO number known only to the sender. There are also 16 standardised messages that can be sent with the money.
At the other end, the recipient can furnish identification and collect the money either at his house or from a designated post office after filling up a form. This service is currently available in select cities of the country.

The self-help groups-Post Office Linkage pilot project will be implemented in five blocks of Tiruvarur district, viz. Muthupettai, Koradachery, Thiruthuraipoondi, Tiruvarur and Valangaiman, said Shambu Kallolikar, Tiruvarur Collector, on Saturday.

Inaugurating a two-day training programme on the implementation of the scheme for the staff of post offices in the five blocks, Kallolikar said the scheme was aimed at covering self-help groups in rural areas, which were not covered by banks to get loans.

Under the scheme, the post offices would act as banks and provide loans to SHGs under the pilot project implemented jointly by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development and the Postal Department.

The Collector said that under the programme, the point of service would be the village and the SHG members would be able to recieve the service without hassle or cost.

The success of the programme will depend upon the efforts of the lower level staff in the Postal Department, who have direct contact with the rural people.