The India Post is gearing up to provide better services to post office goers, and ensure that their work is being done as quickly as possible. It is now working on projects and technologies to provide government services at the doorstep and add 10,000 post offices this year to enhance its reach, a top official of the department said on Thursday. Department of Posts Secretary Aman Sharma at a CII conference said that the government has provided the department with Rs 5,200 crore for the modernisation of the post offices using technology.
“We have recently completed delivery through drones in Gujarat. The government has asked us to take forward the IT project that we started in 2012. The postal and various government services will be soon given on doorsteps. “Rather than people coming to post offices, with the help of technology, services will be delivered on their doorsteps,” Sharma said, as reported by news agency PTI.
He said that digital transformation is going to be the way forward and the government is very bullish on using technology to provide services to citizens. During the pandemic, India Post delivered more than Rs 20,000 crore to the doorste
“Government is asking us to enhance our reach further and open more post offices. We have just got permission to open 10,000 more post offices. These will be brick and mortar structures in far-flung areas. The government wants banking and financial services to be available to people within 5 kilometres of their dwelling. Therefore, we are setting up more post offices,” Sharma said.
The new 10,000 post offices will be opened during the current financial year, which will take the total number of post offices in India to around 1.7 lakh.
Apart from making brick and mortar structures, the government also wants to expand to the online scenario in a push to digital India. As per a recent report, The central government is mulling a tie up between the India Post Payments Bank and leading messaging platform WhatsApp to offer a host of banking and financial services.
As per a report by the Economic Times quoting people in the know, the initial collaboration between the payment bank and the messaging giant will offer customers services “such as checking account balance and option to request the opening of a new bank account”. IPPB is the banking arm of India Post.
“A pilot project will be run over the next 60 days with services of IPPB such as balance enquiry, request for a new account, changing pin and passwords being tested out,” ET reported in June quoting the people cited above. They further said that a select number of customers will also be provided with services including request for cash withdrawal and deposit, Aadhaar-to-Aadhaar transfer, update permanent account number (PAN) and Aadhaar number and manage account beneficiaries.
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