Mobiles spell doom for postal dept

Mobiles spell doom for postal dept

Shimla, September 24The advent of cellular phones may have revolutionised communication, especially in a hill state like Himachal, but the postal department has virtually been plunged into a financial crisis with its revenue taking a nosedive.
Majority of the 2,300 post offices in the state are running in a loss. It may sound incredible but the fact is that the post offices in rural areas have not even able to recover an earning of 15 paisa against one rupee spent by the government.
Absence of corporate houses and business establishments in Himachal has further added to the woes of the postal department. The irony is that the main task of the postal department has been reduced to distribution of telephone bills of people, which has hit their services the most. The post offices are mainly dealing in government post and delivering mobile phone bills.
With the BSNL alone having touched a figure of 10 lakh mobile phones in Himachal, postal services have been a major casualty. With people now more into the habit of sending SMSes or making brief calls, writing letters is more or less a thing of the past.
Humera Ahmed, chief post master general of the Himachal circle, admitted that the mobile-phone culture was the main reason for people giving up the habit of writing letters.
“Since in metros there is so much corporate work, postal services are not affected to that extent. However, in rural areas, post offices have very little revenue,” she admitted.
She said according to the proposal at the national level, post offices could start some new schemes, including sale of some products of local people. Citing an example, she said one could order Assam tea or books and other publications of Baba Ramdev through post.
With Himachal having almost 10 lakh mobile phones besides land phones, sale of stamps and envelopes has automatically gone down. Incidentally, Himachal is amongst the top ranked states as far as tele-density is concerned. With a population of over 65 lakh, having 20 lakh mobile phone connection and a sizeable number of land phones, business in post offices has been hit severely.