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.
