Postal services remain disrupted on Day 2

Day after complete suspension, postal services were disrupted at a majority of the total 56 offices across Chandigarh on Tuesday. The customers faced hardship today also with the post offices struggling to resume normal operations even after a “major technological upgrade”.

A visit to several post offices in Chandigarh revealed that postal services remained badly disrupted throughout the day at the majority of the total 56 offices. A few were reportedly operating but with frequent snags and poor connectivity issues.

Attributing the Monday’s suspension to a major technical upgrade, the senior postal authorities had claimed that the normal services would be restored from Tuesday. Contrary to the official claim, the staffers at most of the post offices maintained that the systems were not working since morning and they were struggling to cope with the technological shift.

The disruption in postal services caused inconvenience to the customers, who were either left to wait endlessly in the long queues or were asked to visit other post offices to get their work done.

The Director Postal Services (Headquarters) in Chandigarh, Padmagandha Mishra, told The Tribune that the disruption was partial and the services were made available at various post offices throughout the day even as the glitches kept surfacing at some centres.

The Department of Posts is in the process of rolling out the next generation APT application IT2.0, a major leap towards digital excellence under which the post offices are undergoing a major technical upgrade.

As part of this transformative initiative, the upgraded system will be implemented across all the post offices in the region.

For enabling a seamless and secure transition to this advanced digital platform, a planned downtime was scheduled for Monday following which no public transactions were carried out at the post offices.

This was done to facilitate data migration, system validations and configuration processes, ensuring that the new system goes live smoothly and efficiently.

Mishra disclosed that the APT application was designed to offer an enhanced user experience, faster service delivery and a more customer-friendly interface, reflecting the department’s commitment to deliver smarter, efficient and future-ready postal operations.

Chandigarh