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Sunday 22 July 2018

Note on Pre & Post-Rollout CSI functioning in the Post offices, before the committee to discuss the issues in the meeting on 23/07/2018 in the Dak Bhawan.

                Definitely, the Department have to introduce new technology/software in the Postal department to meet with the new challenges in the market and to cater the needs of the customer to provide best services. In any way the objective is to strengthen the Indiapost base and its credibility/viability. Whereas the CSI has been rolled out in many circles but it has been rolled out in Himachal Pradesh Punjab and Haryana Circle. The rollout was executed nearly on the dates fixed by the competent authority. The ground reality at the operational level is far from the requirements required for such rollout. The post rollout situation is not explainable because of:
1.       The training schedule to the End users and User champions were arbitrarily fixed to 3 days and 8 days respectively.
2.       Even during the training due to non-availability of connectivity for days together the training was deemed to have been completed within the scheduled. Surprisingly, no material in the form of a uniform procedure to work was provided during the training to the trainees. Nearly a demonstration was given and the most shocking was, the TCS trainer had no knowledge about Indiapost except the SAP, POS and BO modules. He couldn’t elaborate as to how to tally the accounts in live environment. There was none to answer the needs of the staff.
3.       The rollout was done without pre-plan, providing adequate staff, enhancing of bandwidth, new computers replacing of old ones, providing UPS and gensets.
4.       The Postal services were switched off for four days before rollout and it took weeks together to restore the services partially. Causing avoidable loss to the Department.
The Post-rollout has further compounding the miseries of operational staff. The work is done on POS, BO and SAP. These three modules take more time to login and the SAP takes unimaginable time for login. In single handed where all the modules are functioning in the same computer the user has to time and again login for every service i.e. if a RL is booked and a PLI premium is to be collected the user has to login for RL, Finacle and mccamish. Resulting avoidable inconvenience to the customer made to wait for minutes together.
Due to the slow response of sap the postman module doesn’t function regularly and the time taken to invoice the articles is three time than the pre-rollout even the returns may not be taken for days together. The BOs article return is not being attended due to non-showing of articles date-wise. POS figures don’t reflect the same day in TCB (Treasurer Cash Book)/Daily Account and are reflected in the next 2-3 days. There is no certainty of the accuracy of the work performed by the users in the CSI.
Tallying of Accounts/generation of daily account: -
In the absence of lucid instructions/ guidelines the accounts are tallied by hit and trial method. It is learnt that every transaction have to be fed in F-02/FB50, which takes enormous time and we feel none is using this method. The users are made to use an un-official app i.e CSI Utility, which is to some extent is helpful. The procedure to use excels and to further upload it is not at all practicable in the post offices having work business.
The biggest causality is that the department has not provided with the simple,  the user-friendly procedure/guidelines at the operational level resulting a chaos.
Issuance of cheque: -
The time taken for issue a cheque is beyond calculation i.e. in HP there is single one time customer account, the user has wait for his turn to issue cheque, the moment other user leave the window. Similarly, e.g. there is one account with the Senior Postmaster Chandigarh and all the eligible users have to stand and wait for their turn to issue the cheque to the customer.
Raising of the Tickets: - Usually the officials/Users are not raising the tickets but whenever the tickets are raised these are not resolved for days together and to our surprise the TCS seems to have shown its helplessness in resolving the tickets and even to meet with the requirements of the Indiapost having largest network. A copy of reply received in one of the ticket raised is enclosed which is an eye opener.
Monitoring: -
The directorate is reviewing the services by holding video conferences/ fixing and reviewing the targets but till date there is no mechanism to monitor the functioning of CSI neither in Divisional offices nor in circle offices. There seems to be no accountability at the administrative level except to say, raise the ticket, it is PAN India issue. We can well imagine the plight of the users at the operational level.
Due to slow connectivity the services are badly affected. We seek immediate resolution of all such problems by ensuring the following: -
1.       Every office should have adequate bandwidth and regular connectivity.
2.       All the computers must have 2GB RAM, replacing the out-dated computers.
3.       Every office must be provided with UPS and Gensets.
4.       Capacity of the server must be enhanced to cater the workload for prompt accessibility.
5.       In many offices a user is a supervisor and a supervisor is as user. Therefore, there is no sanctity in the functioning as the shortage of staff continues.
6.       Supply standard/simple/user friendly procedure/guidelines in the operative office.
7.       Evolve a mechanism to monitor the functioning of internet, macamish, finacle and CSI.
Despite all this we congratulate the operative staff our system managers, who are somehow working on these software.


H. S. Guleria
Jagdish Dhiman
Circle Secretary
Circle Secretary
AIPEU Group-‘C’
AIPEU Group-‘C’
HP Circle
Punjab Circle