Story of Sufferings
After CBS Migration in Post Offices
Shri. R. N. Parashar, General Secretary, All India Postal
Employees Union Group C has written a letter to Smt. Kavery Banerjee, Secretary
Post with subject line “Untold sufferings faced by the workings staff in
CBS rolled out offices throughout the Country.
A
kind attention is invited to our earlier references on the subject, wherein the
problems mentioned therein are almost unaddressed till date. It is a known fact
that CBS migration is undergoing in large no. of offices in many Circles. Till
time more than 5000 offices are rolled out to CBS, because of the pressure
applied by the Department in haste. Because of such a fast approach, the
end users at the Counter area are affected badly, and the public
also suffering a lot.
Whereas in Banking
Sector, when such migration is undertaken, it has been carried out in a phased
manner for eg. in SBI, the leader in Banking sector, migration was made only in
100 branches at the first year.
You may aware that
the staff are struggling with outdated computers and peripherals, which were
purchased during the year 2000 to 2005 and no funding is made
so far to replace them till date and as a whole the Department
is surviving with very old hardware. Even proper up gradation of CPU is
not made in many areas and the Software loaded is upto Windows XP, almost in
most of the offices. Finacle can be loaded only with Windows 7 and
hence the officers at ground level are pressurized to use
pirated version of Windows 7, which is totally illegal and leads
to legal litigation from Microsoft. The staff are compelled to work
in the outdated mode with pirated software, resulting in non-operation.
The MOU made with
M/s Sify, for network integration is limiting to low bandwidth such as 128 Kbps
to 256 Kbps in single and double handed offices, and 256 kbps to 512 kbps in
‘A’ class to LSG offices resulting in sluggish connectivity and takes hours
together to transform the data. These results in hang over and the transactions
could not be able to be made at the instant, as the Department expects. It
requires at least 1 to 4 Mbps and M/s Sify refused to increase the bandwidth
now.
End of day process
cannot be made after validation/supervisor verification and the staff has to
wait for the nod from the Infosys, even after midnights on several days and at
times it can be made on the next day morning. Even the women employees
are compelled to complete the EOD process in midnights and their
husbands or wards waiting till midnights to carry home. They could not attend
even their family, personal and social obligations, resulting in loss of mental
balance, family problems, stress and social problems. There is no safety and
security for the women employees leaving the office by late nights, especially
in rural areas, where there is no transportation available. It is our
responsibility to ensure the safety and security of the women employees and no
untoward incident should be allowed to happen as in case of Jyoti Singh Pandey
of New Delhi
Even the Help desk
provided is not answering and the end users are taken to task and receiving
brick bats from the irate public. This results in closing of
accounts in large numbers that too, can be made not on
the date of presentation but after few days and
our Department loses large chunk of customers, because
of the miscalculations, wrong estimations and over ambitious stand of
the bureaucrats.
Consequent to the
increase in large number of Post Offices on CBS, it was observed for the past
two months that the Data Centre Closure process is executed during day time
that too during peak Counter hours. This results in slow accessibility of
Finacle throughout the country. Irrespective of bandwidth, the Finacle slowness
has been experienced in all Post Offices in the recent past. This affects the
public services very badly during the peak hour viz. from 11.00 am to 03.00 pm
on daily basis.
Further, due to
Finacle slowness, the most affected operation is the Cheque Clearing
operations. The Clearance House sends the images of the cheques to the
Head Offices at around 08.00 am in the morning. The onus of furnishing the
information pertaining to Bounced Cheques, that too before 11 am to the
clearing house, lies on the respective Head Offices. If the information
pertaining to Bounced Cheques is not received before 11.00 am from the
concerned HOs, the entire amount of Inward Clearance cheques are deemed to be
CLEARED by the clearance house. This leads to encashment of bounced
cheques, the responsibility of which lies on the shoulder of the poor officials
and they have to face contributory negligence recoveries.
Since from the day
of the first migration, the staff unions are complaining about the deficiency
in services provided my M/S Infosys Ltd, especially facing enormous problems in
the Finacle Software, besides bandwidth, network, transmission and Server
problems. On each and every occasion or from the day we are complaining at all
levels, there is one word reply that, everything will be set right and put into
rails one by one as this is only a transition period and everybody should bear
with, in the interest of the Department. This is the saying mooted out and
spread everywhere, from top to bottom. Now the 2 years Contract period
for total the implementation is nearing completion and there is no sign of
improvement and the problems persist and aggravate everywhere. It is most unfortunate
to mention that we are all bearing with all these hardships and sufferings, in
the interest of M/S Infosys.
Because of all these
deficiencies the Department not only losing the customers, besides there is
huge loss of man days and due to non-operation there is huge loss of money.
This should be compensated with. There is a penalty clause in the Contract for
deficiency in service. Instead of pulling the poor ground level officials, the
application of penalty clause may perhaps be considered and applied on the
service providers viz. Ms. Infosys and M/s Sify. It is reported that India
Based on the above,
our Union requests the Secretary Posts
i) To stop such
unmindful migrations into CBS/CIS immediately till settlement of the problems
reported;
ii) To provide
adequate infrastructure to the ground level offices, such as replacement of
systems, computer peripherals, UPS, battery, printers etc. Immediately;
iii) To improve the
bandwidth of sify network at least to the level of 512 kbps in single handed
offices and to the level of 4Mbps in Head Post offices;
iv) To centralize
the EOD process at CPC level in all circles and to relieve the official
at ground level after completion of validation process , without
late night detention ;
v) To centralize the
cheque clearance work at CPC level, since it is now under CBS;
vi) to
ensure the operation of CBS without
interruption/slowness during peak hours to cater the
need of the common public .
Soliciting immediate
response and reply.
With kind regards,
Yours sincerely,
(R. N. Parashar)
General Secretary
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