BENGALURU: The success of building a lowcost Sub Post office at Doddanekundi near Marthahalli has caught the national attention and 23 more such offices are set to be replicated across Karnataka and a couple of other states. The building on 39 square metres has cost the Bengaluru Postal Department a mere Rs 15 lakh. g D Bhat, Assistant Director, Buildings, Bangalore Postal Department, told The new indian express that the Postal Department has approved the construction of eight more post offices in Karnataka.
“They will come up at Ha, Sulibele, Sattur, Hudgi, Rani Channamma nagar, naikal and Shankara narayana areas,” he said. eight post offices in Rajasthan and seven in Odisha too are being built using the same method, he added. For the Doddanekundi post office, the land earmarked was 40,469 square metres. “The total project cost, including civil and electrical works, came to just Rs 15,47,527,” he said.
S Chandrashekhar, Assistant engineer, Civil engineering Department, Bengaluru Postal Division, said, “The building standing on 400 square feet was completed within four months in February 2020. The normal cost for such a building would be around Rs 21 lakh and we have saved up to Rs 6 lakh. The use of locally available material is the key reason for the reduced cost.”
Laterite from Mangaluru has been used instead of the traditional building material. “The sloped roof was made out of reinforced cement concrete, and care was taken to build only bare essentials. Also, no garden was created like in other post offices,” he added. new technology, too, has helped reduce the required space. “We have built rooms for very minimum space inside the building. For instance, there was no need for a room to separately house records as it can be stored online now,” he said. leading the way