Cash transfer from February 9

The direct cash transfer scheme (DCT) is going to be launched through post offices in Chittoor district. The seeding of the accounts of beneficiaries with Aadhaar numbers and biometrics is being completed and it would be launched by February 9, Chief Postmaster General AP Circle Karuna Pillai said.

Union Minister for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh, Union Minister of State for Information Technology and Communication Killi Kripa Rani, Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy and other Ministers and dignitaries are expected to attend the launch, she said speaking on the sidelines of the AP Postal Regional Cultural Selection Trials 2013 here on Saturday.

Further, the Department of Posts is launching its core banking service in Srikakulam district and Parvathipuram division this month, she said. With the linking of the postal savings bank accounts the users would be able to transact their accounts in any post office in the region for now and later it would be expanded to cover all the post offices. These accounts also would be seeded with the Aadhaar and biometric details to enable their unique identification and enable them to be used for the Centre’s DCT scheme.

Accepting the fact that there were delays in the delivery of Aadhaar cards to individuals she said that postmen were heavily burdened. In some cases the postmen have 8,000 articles to deliver. This would cause a delay in their delivery. In Hyderabad, the postmen have been delivering the Aadhaar cards on Sundays and holidays also, she said and added that the Department was also recruiting staff apart from provide postmen with two-wheelers to increase the efficiency in the last mile delivery, she added.

The Department will sett up two automatic mail sorting machines at its complex near the Hyderabad airport. One system would cater to the regular letters and the other to sort the parcels. The letter sorting machine would be able to handle 35,000 letters per hour and the other would be able to sort 25,000 parcels per hour.