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You may aware that the staff are struggling with outdated computers and peripherals, which were purchased during the year 2000 to 2005 and no funding is made so far to replace them till date and as a whole the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 The staff are compelled to work in the outdated mode with pirated software, resulting in non-operation.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 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 Secretary Posts 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.
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
