National Federation of Postal Employees
1st Floor North Avenue Post Office Building, New Delhi-110 001
Phone: 011.23092771 e-mail: nfpehq@gmail.com
Mob: 9868819295/9810853981 website: http://www.nfpe.blogspot.com
NO.PF-NF/2017 Dated 24-Oct-2017
To
Sri. Manoj Sinha
Hon’ble Minister for Communications & IT
Govt of India, Sanchar Bhavan,
New Delhi-110 001.
Respected Sir,
National Federation of Postal Employees (NFPE) and all its affiliated Unions/Associations representing about 70% of the Postal Employees request your immediate intervention to save the Department of Posts and five and a half lakhs employees working in the department including about three lakhs Gramin Dak Sevaks.
As you are aware, the finance Ministry has already issued notification permitting all Nationalised Banks and three private Banks (ICICI Bank, Axis Bank and HDFC Bank) to accept deposits for all Small Savings Schemes, viz; Recurring Deposit (RD), Time Deposits (TD), Monthly Income Scheme (MIS), Senior Citizens Savings Scheme (SCSS), Sukanya Samridhi Account (SSA), Kisan Vikas Patra (KVP) and National Savings Certificate (NSC VIII issue) with effect from 10th October, 2017.
Small Savings Schemes are the monopoly of Postal Department and hence they are known as “Post Office Small Savings Shemes”. The compensation paid by Finance Ministry to Postal Department for running the Savings Bank business on agency basis is a major source of revenue for the department. About 45% of the revenue of Department of Posts accounts for compensation received for Small Savings business. Permitting Banks also to operate Small savings will adversely affect the business of Post offices and revenue will fall steadily, thereby increasing the total deficit of the Department of Posts.
Further, about 50% of the work load of Post offices comes from the Samll Savings related work. Outsourcing this work to Banks including private Banks will result in fall of overall workload of the Post Offices and staff becoming surplus. Thus, in the long run the very existence of Post Offices and Postal employees will be at stake.
Secondly, we want to bring to your kind notice, the plight of about three lakhs Gramin Dak Sevaks working mostly in the Branch Post Offices in rural villages of our country. Their wage revision has not yet taken place eventhough the wage revision of their counterpart (departmental employees) had taken place and orders issued on 25-7-2016 itself. The one man committee headed by Sri. Kamalesh Chandra, Retired Postal Board Member had submitted its report to the Government on 24-11-2016. Almost one year is over and the file is still pending with Finance Ministry. Justice to this poor, downtrodden section of employees is long overdue.
Similarly, the Re-verification Membership of Gramin Dak Sevaks under Check-off system under the provisions of GDS (RSA) Rules for grant of recognition was ordered by the Department and the verification process reached in the final stage. Recovery of subscription from pay of the officials in respect of all the Applicant Unions/Associations was made in the month of September 2017. But suddenly Department issued an order stopping the membership verification process until further orders. The Reverififation of Membership of GDS was due in the year 2015 itself as the recognition granted to one of the GDS Union had expired in 2015 after five years period fixed by the Government.
In view of the above, we most humbly request the Hon’ble Minister is personal intervention so that favourable orders will be issued in the following issues:
(1) Stop the implementation of the Finance Ministry’s notifiation permitting Banks to do Small Savings business.
(2) Immediate Implementation of favourable recommendations of Kamalesh Chandra Committee on Gramin Dak Sevaks.
(3) Completing the Re-verification process of Membership under check-off system and granting recognition to eligible applicant Unions/Associations of GDS.
With profound regards,
Yours faithfully,
(R.N. Parashar) Secretary General,
NFPE