question_answer 13)

Write a detailed note on various facilities offered by Indian Postal Department.

Answer:

Indian post and telegraph department provides various postal services across India. For providing these services the whole country has been divided into 22 postal circles. These circles manage the functioning of the various head post offices, sub-post offices and branch post offices. There are 154149 post offices and 564701 letter boxes processing 1575 crore mails every year. The various facilities provided by postal department are broadly categorized into (i) Financial Facilities Post Office Savings Bank is the largest retail bank having 150000 plus branches. Financial facilities are provided through the post office's savings schemes like Public Provident Fund (PPF), Kisan Vikas Patra, and National Saving Certificates apart from retail banking functions of monthly income schemes, recurring deposits, savings account, time deposits and money order facility. (ii) Mail Facilities Mail services consist of parcel facilities that is transmission of articles from one place to another; registration facility to provide security of the transmitted articles and insurance facility to provide insurance cover for all risks in the course of transmission by post. (iii) Allied Facilities (a) Greeting Post Indian post offers a beautiful and varied range of greeting cards for every occasion. (b) Media Post Indian corporate can use media post which is an innovative and effective vehicle to advertise their brand through postcards, envelopes, aerogram, telegrams, and also through letter boxes. (c) Direct Post It is for direct advertising which can be both addressed as well as unaddressed. (d) International Money Transfer Indian post has a collaboration with Western Union financial services, USA, which enables remittance of money from 185 countries to India. (e) Passport Facilities Indian post has a unique partnership with the ministry of external affairs for facilitating the process of passport application. (f) Speed Post Indian post has over 1000 destinations covered under the speed post facility in India and links with 97 major countries across the globe. (g) e-bill Post It is the latest offering of the Indian post and telegraph department to collect bill payment across the counter for BSNL and Bharti Airtel