BHUBANESWAR: Odisha Postal Circle has topped in Y category of postal circles in revenue earning in 2017-18 financial year. The Circle received the first prize and citation from Union Minister of State for Communications Manoj Sinha in Bhopal on April 29. The Circle opened 17,67,176 new saving accounts and earned `318 crore revenue from their transactions during the year.
Chief Post Master General, Odisha Circle, Santosh Kumar Kamila said they have been trying to provide better services including Aadhaar facilities to the people. “In Odisha, there are 1206 post offices, and in the first phase, Aadhaar facilities have been provided at 473 post offices,” Kamila said.Besides, Post Office Passport Seva Kendra facility, which was available at Rourkela, Sambalpur and Koraput, has been extended to Balasore, Berhampur, Baripada and Bhawanipatna in 2017-18. With this facility available at post offices, people do not have to go to the Capital for verification.
They can visit the head post offices where the officials would carry out biometric and document verification, after which they can apply for passports online. Besides providing passport services at the above centres, the Athagarh head office has started providing rail ticket booking facility. Similarly, postal life insurance, which was earlier provided to only Government employees and Government undertaking employees, will now be provided to the professionals of various private sectors.
Payment of electricity bills is another facility that has been provided at the post offices from last year. The consumers of Southco, Wesco and Nesco are now able to pay through post offices having e-payment facilities, and similar facility will now be available for Cesu consumers. Odisha Postal Circle and Cesu will sign an agreement in this regard on May 22. As many as 1024 post offices have computerised network and are working on core banking solutions.
Steps are being taken to provide computer based services in 7008 branch post offices and the system has been implemented in 2611 offices under the ‘Darpan’ project. Moreover, 33 branches in Odisha will have India Post Payments Bank out of the total 650 in the country as per the permission of the Reserve Bank of India.