Hyderabad, November 17:
The once ubiquitous Post Office, which has been fast
receding in public mindspace in recent years, was pitchforked onto the
centre on November 8, when the Prime Minister announced measures to
demonetise.
Along with the expanding banking sector
with its lakhs of branches and ATMs, the Post Offices, which number
around 1.2 lakh in the country, with another 30,000 branch offices, were
also asked to meet the gigantic challenge of exchange of ₹500 and
₹1,000 notes.
A week later, a visit to a few Post
Offices bore typical scenes of long queues and cash exhaustion within a
few hours of opening, in addition to shortage of staff. However, in
Telangana, with a network of 4,961 post offices, an average transaction
of ₹80 crore in currency exchange has been taking place, according to
official sources.
According to Ravinder, an agent
vending postal services and products, there has been tremendous pressure
on the branches to exchange currency. The bigger offices are exchanging
around ₹60-80 lakh per day.
“In the face of limited
amount of cash, we are using our vehicles to get the money and doing the
exchange for a few hours and deploying additional staff by drawing on
retired employees as well,” said the Director (Postal Services) V
Upender of the Office of the Post Master General, Hyderabad.
The
Postal Department is using its MIS system to track the all India
transactions through control rooms set up across the country on a daily
basis. In Hyderabad alone, seven Head POs and 200 branch POs are
involved in the operations since November 9.
However,
the role of the POs is limited for such a large scale operation as most
of them do not have ‘safe room’ to secure the currency and are also not
well-equipped. They have also not been given the wherewithal to handle
currency exchange. This problem is stark in rural areas where the Postal
Department has a good network, says B Yerram Raju a veteran banker.
Source : http://www.thehindubusinessline.com
No comments:
Post a Comment