To
Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad,
Hon`ble Minister, Communications & IT,
Government of India,
New Delhi-110 001
Sub:
Miseries and untold sufferings faced by the staff in CBS &CIS rolled out
offices throughout the nation – Immediate and personal intervention requested
to rein in the situation.
With due respects and profound regards, we are perforced to
bring the following to your kind notice for your immediate intervention and to
halt the hasty exercise without minding the adverse effects in implementing the
CBS and CIS by the administration in the Postal department.
At the outset, we wish to make it clear that we are not
against to the modernisation of the postal service and we are welcoming the
recent changes taken place in the department in the arena of modernisation. In
fact, it is the postal service that only modernize without engaging any experts
or other agencies with the fullest cooperation and optimum utilization of the
staff particularly the Postal Assistants called as Systems administrator with
their personal knowledge which they already acquired in the computer oriented
operations. Even today the same officials only attend faults and servicesby
releasing so many patches to the software and maintain properly whenever
required and not depending the agency services and without any extra
remunerations.
Now, a hasty exercise is being carried out by the department
and CBS migration is undergoing in large no. of offices in many Circles without
minding the capacity of the network and the peripherals available in the
offices. Till time more than 6000 offices are rolled out to CBS, due to the
pressure exercised by the Department in haste. Because of such an unrealistic
fast approach, the end users at the Counter area are affected very badly, and
the public are also suffering a lot.
Whereas, in Banking Sector, when such migration is
undertaken, it has been carried out in a phased manner; for example, in SBI,
the leader in Banking sector, the migration was made only in 100 branches at
the first year and so on.
It is the known fact that the staff are suffering and
struggling with the outdated computers and peripherals, which were purchased
during the year 2000 to 2005 that is at the time of introduction of computer in
the post offices and no adequate funding has been made so far to replace or
substitute them till date and as a whole the Department is surviving with very
old outdated hardware. Even proper up gradation of CPU has not been 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. This
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. Despite these facts were brought to
the notice of the Secretary, Department of Posts several times, still there is
no action to upgrade the bandwidth to the existing needy offices but going on
introducing CBS in new offices and creating the problems further.
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. If the particulars about the closure of
accounts by the public in the CBS introduced offices is collected, it will
establish our concern about the service.
Consequent to the increase in large number of Post Offices
on CBS, it was observed for the past four 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 the
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 the postal
employees 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 Post has undertaken the project for
switching over to Core Banking Solution platform with a total project outlay of
Rs.800 crores. Hence, in the interest of the Department, we request the Hon’ble
Minister for Communication to pursue with, on the direction, in order to pull
the vendor and to save the customer services, the image of the Department and
the public money.
The following are the few examples the staff facing across
the counters which have not been attended by the department but expanding the
problems to more offices in the nation.
- Connectivity
is the major problem which is damping the image of the Postal Department.
- Slowness
& non accessibility of Finacle server affects the day to day work.
(Each and every transaction getting an error message “COULD NOT CONNECT
THE SERVER”, “SERVER IS NOT ACCESSIBLE”, “PLEASE CONTACT YOUR
ADMINISTRATOR”, “WEB PAGE COULD NOT OPEN THIS PAGE” etc.,)
- “USER
ALREADY LOGIN” problem is occurring very often. In single handed offices
System Administrator should alone rush and resolve this problem.
- Even
in first attempt an error message “USER ID IS LOCKED. PLEASE CONTACT
ADMINISTRATOR” and could not able to access the finacle. “CSAC” menu only
authorized to CPC. SO that they can only reset the user ID. ‘CSAC’ menu
option may kindly be provided to Divisional SPO or concerned System
Administrator.
- Report
option not working properly.
- E.g,
There is no provision to generate/print SSA LOT
- Certificate
numbers not shown in the KVP/NSC certificates daily issue report
- Sometimes
MIS & SCSS account numbers not shown in the LOT of counter
transactions
- There
is no provision to print the previous days LOT, Consolidation, KVP/NSC
Issue & Discharge journals, SB automatic credit report etc.,
6. Total menus available in the Finacle not educated to all
the officials. (Like CMRC, HABI, HPSP etc.,)
7. Inadequate training to the officials. Online training not
given to the officials at the time of the training period. All the training
were given to theoretically not practically (Eg., Agent transaction,
Certificate discharge, Inventory movement etc.,)
8. SOL/Role change not effectively used by the
administrative level. Whenever PA of the CBS counter proceeds on leave in his
user ID working with other officials.
9. Some POSB rules are blindly violated in the CBS Finacle
software. Eg., RD account can close even on the same day of opening, not
bothering about the eligible date of birth for SSA account etc.,
10. No clear cut ruling about the other SOL transactions
whether we can update the pass book entry of other office?
11. Changing of rules very often. Officials could not able
to update the current rulings.
12. Even modifying the CIF ID no message received for
deposit and withdrawal.
13. Deposits and withdrawals allowed to Supervisor option
also. This cause to verify the transactions. Other office supervisor only can
verify these transactions.
14. If someone office transaction verified at other office
that particular transaction shown in the verified office’s LOT not in the
transaction performed office’s LOT.
15. Certificate numbers not shown while issuing KVP/NSC
certificates.
16. There is no option to reprint the certificate. If one
forget to print the certificates there is no provision to print the same in
future.
17. In the cheque clearing option facing much difficulty to
find out the bank code, branch code, POSB cheque option not available in the
said menu.
18. “ALREADY SESSION AVAILABLE” error message shown
frequently.
19. BAT & DLT not shown in CBS Finacle.
20. If any withdrawal done no provision to block such amount
till verifying the said transaction. There may be chance to withdraw the amount
by using ATM card. In banking sector if any amount withdrawn such amount will
be blocked and cannot withdraw by using ATM card.
There is not tangible action either by the department or by
the vendors so far. Based on the above, our Union requests the Hon’ble Minister
of Communications that
- to
stop such unmindful migrations into CBS/CIS immediately till settlement of
the problems reported ;
- to
provide adequate infrastructure to the ground level offices, such as
replacement of systems, computer peripherals , UPS, battery, printers etc.
immediately;
- 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 ;
- 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 ;
- to
centralize the cheque clearance work at CPC level, since it is now under
CBS ;
- to
ensure the operation of CBS without interruption/slowness during peak
hours to cater the need of the common public .
·
As we have no positive response from
the department to mitigate the sufferings of the staff deployed in the CBS
introduced offices and as an act of adding fuel to fire, the department
unmindfully is introducing the CBS in the remaining offices and losing the
customers as well as causing mental torture to the officials, we have no other
alternate except to bring these facts before the Hon’ble Minister and seeking
his personal intervention to create a congenial and calm working atmosphere and
ensure a correct and well planned expansion of CBS further in the Department of
Posts.
·
May we request your response, Sir,
·
·
With Profound regards,
·
Yours sincerely,
·
·
(R. N. Parashar)
·
Secretary General (NFPE) &
·
General Secretary (AIPEU Gr.-C)