Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister of Communications & Information Technology, chaired a review meeting on the issues relating to setting up of Post Bank, Mail delivery, and e-Commerce, at Dak Bhawan, New Delhi, on 01 May 2015.
The Minister emphasized that with a vast network of Post Offices at its disposal, the proposed Post Bank should become a game-changer in Indian banking sector. The Post Bank should become a local agency for the recently announced MUDRA Bank. Also, the Post Bank accounts should be Aadhar seeded so that various Government schemes for Direct Benefit Transfer could be rolled out through the Post Bank.
In order to improve the visibility of rural Branch Post Offices, the Minister directed the Department to install large Signage Boards for rural Post Offices within a span of 6 months. The Minister also announced his intention to pay a surprise visit to a Branch Post Office in NCR in the coming weeks.
While reviewing the performance of the Department in the field of e-Commerce parcel delivery, the Minister appreciated the growth of more than 36% in parcel revenue in the last one year. The Department has collected more than Rs. 500 crores for COD articles of major e-Commerce players such as Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal, Yepme, Naaptol, etc., in 2014-15.
The Minister stated that the Department should step up its efforts to ramp up its capabilities to book, process, transmit & deliver e-Commerce articles. By doing so, the Department can easily become a market leader in domestic e-Commerce delivery segment. The Minister directed senior officers in Postal Circles to have one-to-one meeting with e-Commerce players operating in their areas to obtain their feedback about the services & undertake immediate remedial action wherever required.
The Minister took keen interest in reviewing the Online KPIs for mail delivery performance. Whereas he appreciated the performance of Speed Post & Registered Mail delivery, the Minister expressed his concern at the complaints received for delay in mail delivery. Kavery Banerjee, Secretary, Department of Posts, highlighted that the incidence of complaints in Speed Post was 1:10,000 and that owing to its reach, track & trace & delivery performance, Speed Post was the market leader in domestic express sector. The Secretary (Posts), however, assured the Minister that the Department has initiated several steps to further improve mails delivery through development of road transport network, nodal mechanized delivery in larger cities, and use of IT solution for monitoring Letter Box clearance.
The Minister asked for a report on action taken by the Department against erring delivery staff in the last 6 months.
