Post offices to provide railway booking facility in Chandigarh

Chandigarh, Jun 17 (UNI) The Postal Department will provide railway booking facility in Chandigarh and Punjab soon.

Disclosing this at a press conference here today, Punjab Postal Circle Chief Postmaster General Prithvi Raj Kumar said the booking will be provided through Passenger Reservation System at Sectors 17, 22, 47 and PGI in Chandigarh and Mohali Phase-I Post Office and Patiala Head Post Office in Punjab in the first phase. The facility will be extended to Jalandhar, Ludhiana and Amritsar later, he added.

The railway booking counters will be entirely manned by the postal staff who would be trained for the purpose. This is likely to reduce the queues at the existing railway reservation counters.

Mr Kumar said the Postal Department had decided to extend the facility of distribution of coins on behalf of the Reserve Bank of India to more post offices in Chandigarh and important cities in Punjab.

At present, three post offices in Chandigarh are selling Re one and Rs two coins on behalf of the RBI and this facility is going to be extended to post offices at Sector 55 and Sector 59 in Chandigarh and Mohali and Kharar in Punjab shortly, he added.

Mr Kumar said the Postal Department planned to tie up with the state governments and Chandigarh Union Territory Administration to reach out their various public wefare schemes to beneficiaries through post offices.

The department also plans to tie up with communication companies like BSNL, Reliance, Vodafone, Airtel and others to provide a range of services and products like 'Retail Post' and 'Bill Mail Service', 'Verification of addresses', pre-mailing activities and delivery of their bills.

Mr Kumar said the Punjab Circle had been making constant efforts to achieve their mission by achieving revenue growth on the one hand and making the environment customer friendly in the post offices.

At present, the Expense Coverage Ratio of the Punjab circle is 87 per cent which means that the circle was earning only 87 per cent of its expenditure. He said 13 per cent deficit was proposed to be covered by March 2009. Out of 22 circles only two circles, Haryana and Maharashtra, are cost effective, he said.

UNI VKJ MP CS1908