Connectivity problems at post offices let citizens down

Panaji: Customers at post offices across the state have been facing technical difficulties with regards to transactions after issues relating to the server and connectivity hit the system. With the problem persisting for over two weeks, citizens are queueing up at their respective post offices hours prior to the office's opening.

Officials at the Goa circle of the department said that this problem prevailed following the department's migration to the core banking solution (CBS) system this year. As a result, other circles of the department in various states, have also been severely hit.

The India Post has a network-based system which is linked to a central server. Transactions made throughout the country are linked to this. Owing to the massive transactions due to the financial year-end, the bandwidth suffered heavy stress resulting in the crash of the server and the links to it, an official said.

The LAN connectivity gets delinked for long periods, leaving employees helpless while logging on to the central server. Dealing with the present scenario has become a Herculean task for the staff.

Many customers, most of whom are senior citizens, told TOI that several attempts at transactions have proved futile leaving them frustrated and cynical about India Post's abilities to tackle the issue.

"People begin to queue up at the office as early as 4.30 am even though the post-office at Aldona opens at 8.30am. This is because after the first few transactions, the system crashes forcing residents to line up way ahead of time," informed Nirmala Fernandes, a resident of Aldona.

She further added that when locals argue, the staff keep assuring that the system is buffering but even after hours of waiting the transaction is incomplete.

"The connectivity kept going off making withdrawals, new accounts and various other transactions difficult. So much so that even plain updating of the book was not possible," said Aileen Monteiro.

As of Saturday, there has been some improvement in the connectivity of the internet however Celia D'souza, who is also an agent with clients mainly from Bardez said that other problems gradually cropped up.

Though the connectivity has slightly improved, citizens still have to go queue up early morning because the connection is unpredictable and relapses. Also, since Saturday, the postal department has also stopped Kisan Vikas Patra and National Informatics Center claiming issues with the higher ups.

"Moreover, they accept only 3 transactions per person but as an agent I have many more transactions," she added.

Besides this, sexagenarian Subhash Narvekar informed that the token system has been discontinued at the Panaji post office forcing many others like him to stand in long unending queues. "Last time I waited for over an hour since the server was down. But there are others who have returned for the third and fourth time, yet their work is undone," he said.

Col. Premnath Chowdhary who is a PPF account holder at the post department lamented that the multi-purpose windows do not cater to all the services and only four of the six windows are operational.

Asked about this issue, an official told TOI that since the department is understaffed only few of the windows are currently operational. "We didn't foresee so many transactions after migrating to CBS. We'll try to close all loopholes and satisfy our customers," they assured.

Officials further informed that other sections are hurt because they have been borrowing staff from other sections within the office to lend a hand to manage the CBS workload. The department is however doing their best with available resources but peripheral issues will persist until the issue is resolved at the central level.

"Our central team in Delhi is looking into the matter and the server and connectivity issue shall hopefully be resolved in 10 to 15 days," said assistant director, postal services, SD Madhabhave.