Postal employees staged a day-long dharna at the Office of Chief Postmaster General, Anna Salai, on Friday seeking bandwidth upgradation for better functioning of post offices.
Core Banking Solutions (CBS) were introduced in post offices two years ago and almost all the post offices in the city are networked with the aim of allowing smooth transaction across offices. However, several post offices continue to grapple with delay in transactions and processing of details due to poor connectivity, resulting in the employees working long hours. Customers also have to wait for hours or make multiple visits to the post office or wait for many hours, the protesting employees said.
J. Srivenkatesh of All India Postal Employees Union said that manually, a transaction would take 10 minutes to complete, whereas with the CBS, it should hardly take a few minutes. “But it takes 25 minutes now. Sometimes, it extends to hours,” he rues.
In Chennai, issues with the server led to hiccups in transactions in a few post officers. Now, the problem is widespread across post offices as the server capacity and bandwidth do not match the requirements, the union members said. “We often canvass for various schemes, but are unable to make use of it because of the poor network. Customers often get irked due to the delay and uncertainty over transactions. We risk losing customers,” said a union member.
Responding to the protest, senior postal officials of Tamil Nadu Circle said several software issues had been sorted out and counter operations had shown improvement. The union’s demands have been represented to the Postal Directorate, New Delhi.
