In the age of cutthroat competition, everybody thrives for some new innovative ideas to survive. The age-old system of writing a letter & posting has taken a back seat since a long time after the revolution in communication, especially in electronics communication. In the age of e-mail & SMS, the postal deptt. is trying its best to coup with the changing scenario. To encourage to put pen to paper & writing letter the postal department has come up with a new initiative of engaging the neighborhood postmen to come to your doorstep everytime you need to post a letter.
The friendly neighborhood gentle postman will come to you, provide the stamps, envelopes, inland letters if need be & collect your letter for onward dropping in post office. India post has come up with this novel idea to try & keep the age old habit of letter witting alive. This pick-up service has been finetuned for the West- Bengal circle to make it more user-friendly. The idea is to winback atleast customers who have switched to courier & other services due to the promptness & commitment of delivering the mail in time by other private agencies. This is an age of competition, so postal deptt. can not afford to sit back & relax. Moreover the central deptt. has adequate infrastructure to provide better service hence to win back the people’s trust perhaps this not a bad idea. West-Bengal as always has taken lead to start this initiative. Initially every postman in the 153 post offices in the city & 1600 others across the state have been given targets to achieve and this will be linked to their performances. Each postman now has to sell stamps & stationery worth a certain amount depending on the size & socio-economic condition of his area. The concerned post-master will maintain a record of this and accordingly asses performance of postman.
As per this directive, it is mandatory for every postman to knock as many doors as possible in a day so that the people may not be inconvenienced in handing over their mails. India post has arranged for its much publicity & advertised hoardings outside every post office to create awareness. West-Bengal circle is very optimistic about this & anticipate a probable growth of 15% in outgoing mails because of this pick-up service. Even speed postings can be handed over to postman & the receipt can be had next day from this very postman. For everymail the postman will hand over an authentic receipt stating the date & time much in the tune of courier companies. It seems Govt. deptts are also now feeling the heat of competition from genuine private agencies. Now other Govt. deptts. also must learn lessons from their non-professional attitude & mend their mistakes to become people friendly, otherwise people will desert them in near future in such a fashion that they cannot stand-up erect.