Asia-Pacifc region faces acute shortage of postal manpower

New Delhi, Nov 27 (UNI) India today suggested to countries in the Asia Pacific region to look into the acute shortage of postal employees as it has 51 per cent of the world's post offices but merely 31 per cent of the global manpower.

''We should look into it and do whatever is possible to remove this disparity,'' Minister of State for Telecommunications Shakeel Ahmad told the Asia Pacific Postan Union - Executive Council Meeting here.

At present, the region has 3,42,000 post offices but a total manpower of 17,15,600.

The Minister said 70 per cent of the countries of the region saw their international parcel traffic increase last year, with 45 per cent of postal income being generated by postal financial services.

Mr Ahmad, who is also the Minister for Information technology, said postal reforms have a significant contribution to the economic growth, adding that services such as financial and IT need to be be improved. Besides, the quality of manpower too needs to be upgraded.

Director General to Post I M G Khan suggested that the gap between the post offices and employees needs to be bridged by deploying high technology.

In this context, Mr Khan said the world is increasingly taking recourse to sophisticated technology to improve the quality of services.

Currently, there are over 1,55,295 post offices in India and experts say that better technology and improved quality of human resources will improve delivery of postal services.

UNI