GPO, Pune City Head Post Office go digital with tablets, citizens still inconvenienced

According to information given by Postmaster General, Pune Region, Ramchandra Jayabhaye, in July, nine tablets had been made available at head post offices of Ahmednagar, Baramati, Karad, Pandharpur, Satara, Shrirampur, Solapur and at Pune City Head Post Office and Pune Head Post Office (GPO) to carry out digital transactions.

However, in July when The Indian Express visited the Pune City Head Post Office in Budhwar Peth and the GPO near Pune railway station, cash was the only mode of transaction available. There were no tablets visible and no one seemed to know they existed. Consequently, customers were a harried lot.

As per recent visits from The Express and update from officials, the first time tablets were introduced was in the month of May this year. However, on account of frequent transaction failures, these tablets were returned. But they have been brought back on June 22 and now though the transaction failures have stopped, the transactions are still slower.

Post offices, like the Shivajinagar Post Office, still paint a picture of inefficiency with long queues of people and clerks still asking for cash. This has been very displeasing for many of those standing in those long queues.

Sandeep Kale, a resident of Shivajinagar, stated that things have been the same for as long as he remembers and doesn’t seem to be getting better anytime soon. Another individual standing in the queue said, “I always make a mental reminder to bring the exact amount of cash that I need when I go to the post office as I know they won’t have any other mode of payment and sometimes they don’t even have change for notes of larger denominations.”

Another citizen mentioned that the post office had introduced QR codes for online payments, but they were removed after customers complained about the long time taken to process any payment. He further explained, “Sometimes the payment would outright fail after 5-10 minutes of wait time.”