A facility that would give immense relief to people post offices will sell Tirupati darshanam tickets and also non-judicial stamps.
The Chief Post Master General of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, B.V. Sudhakar said the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam (TTD) has agreed to sell 1,000 tickets through selected post offices in five districts – Chittoor, Vizianagaram, Warangal, Kurnool and Hyderabad on pilot basis. The number of tickets may go up to 5,000 per day if the TTD agrees later. Training of employees for this purpose is on.
With regard to sale of non-judicial stamps, he said the Telangana Government has accepted the proposals sent to them and non-judicial stamps will be available across all post offices from December first week. Proposals were also sent to the Andhra Pradesh Government and it is likely to give its nod soon.
Mr. Sudhakar, who was speaking to the reporters after launching mechanised clearance of letter boxes here on Wednesday, said that postal department was sending 10.27 lakh speed post articles per month in the two states of which 5.81 lakh are from Hyderabad only. Similarly, it was handling 17.35 lakh speed post deliveries of which 5.31 lakh are in the city.
Unlike the popular belief that Internet and mobiles have reduced the usage of postal department, personal and business mail was increasing. Till last year 16 lakh letters were handled daily while it has increased to 22.24 lakh per day as per the September 2014 figures, he said.
Mr. Sudhakar said extreme care was being taken while disbursing money under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) scheme. “We disburse Rs. 1500 crores under the scheme to the beneficiaries. Biometric method is being used to ensure genuineness of the person and later the same is linked to the Aadhar card,” he said adding that even the social security pensions to the tune of Rs. 450 to Rs. 500 crores per month are disbursed without any hassles.
Mr. Sudhakar said under the Mechanised clearance of letter boxes mail is cleared through the specially designed Departmental Mail Motor Services in all the prominent pillar type post boxes under three Postal Divisions in the city. For this purpose all these post boxes are segregated into 10 beats. Letters collected under this system will be brought directly to the Hyderabad sorting office for onward dispatch to various stations. The mechanised clearance will not only save time but also speed up the delivery.
Letters are also being cleared in selected post boxes under the “Nanyatha” programme. Under this system when the letters are cleared, the barcode number kept inside the box is scanned through a mobile phone using android technology. The information is uploaded to the website “http://appost.in/nanyatha indicating the time of clearance, number of letters cleared in each box, the person who has cleared and the location. The scheme helps people to know whether the letter posted in a particular box was cleared and when. It is available in Hyderabad and Vijayawada as of now.
