The Hindu 09.10.2013
Now, pay water bills at post offices
Service will be available in five districts from today
Now, consumers of the Kerala Water Authority (KWA) need
not worry about the limited number of counters and the winding queues to
pay water bills. The bills can be paid at post offices from Wednesday.
In
the initial stage, the service will be available across five districts —
Thiruvananthapuram, Ernakulam, Kottayam, Kollam and Palakkad. It will
be a perfect gift for the State on the World Post Day.
“We
have been running a trial of the water bills payment gateway for the
past one year in the capital district. It was found to be successful and
so we decided to extend the service to other districts. For the first
few months, it will be available in the urban areas of five districts.
Later, we plan to extend the facility to all the post offices in the
State,” K.V. Vijayakumar, Assistant Director of Technology and
Administration, Postal Department, told
The Hindu
.
The move is part of the department’s various
initiatives to make post offices the one-stop shop for services required
by every type of customer. Plans are also afoot to include electricity
bills among the list of services.
Computerisation
The
computerisation of all the 1,506 major post offices in the State was
completed as part of the 11th plan. The work on digitising the 3,500-odd
branch post offices, located in remote regions, will be taken up soon.
Once this work is completed, these smaller centres will also become part
of the integrated postal network across the State.
“The
plan is to digitise the working of these branch offices using handheld
devices, smart phones, thermal printers and barcode scanners. In places
where electricity is scarce or is yet to reach, we will use solar
panels. Various information technology players such as Accenture, TCS
and Infosys are taking care of the various aspects of the project,” said
Mr. Vijayakumar.
As of now, the performance of 1,285
post offices in the State are being monitored closely as part of the
‘Project Arrow’ initiative launched in 2008 to improve the quality of
services in the core areas of mail delivery, money remittances, savings
bank and office service levels.
The ‘look and feel’
of the post offices is also being improved as part of this project. The
external branding as well as the interior design of the offices has been
standardised.
