Editorial Postal Crusader November-2015. 48 HOURS STRIKE ON 1st & 2nd DECEMBER-2015.

48 HOURS STRIKE ON 1^st & 2^nd DECEMBER-2015

                 7^th Central Pay Commission has completed its task. The Report is ready and it was to be submitted by 30^th September, 2015. Pay Commission requested to grant extension for two months to bind up the office but Government is very generous to grant extension for four months i.e. up to 31^stDecember, 2015. National Joint Council of Action of National Council JCM constituent organizations took decision to defer the Indefinite Strike to be held from 23rd November-2015 as Pay Commission has not submitted its report. NFPE has taken decision earlier to go on indefinite strike from 23^rdNovember-2015. But due to some technical reasons and in the wake of decision of NJCA, NFPE Federal Secretariat meeting held at  Hyderabad  on 11.10.2015 had reviewed  the entire situation  and came to the conclusion that 48 hours strike on 1^st & 2^nd December-2015  will be organized in the Department of Post on 4 Points Charter of  demands which include ,  Inclusion of GDS in 7^th CPC , Implement cadre Restructuring proposals in all sections, filling  up of all vacant posts in all cadres  as per actual sanctioned strength and stopping up of  all types of harassments in the name of implementation of various            new services and schemes and Trade Union Victimization.

            Neither Government of India nor Department of Post appears to be sincere towards the genuine demands of Postal Employees including GDS. Our demand of inclusion of GDS in 7^th CPC which was assured by the Secretary (P) and Minister Communication is still unsettled. They are not at all serious to settle the genuine demand of poor GDS employees who are still deprived from all the basic rights and facilities extended to the regular Government employees. We cannot tolerate this state of affairs of exploitation of GDS employees and can go to any extent until and unless the GDS employees are treated as regular Government employees and given all the due rights and facilities extended to regular Government employees.

            The Cadre restructuring proposals in all Cadres including Postal Accounts and MMS were finalized about 2 years ago but still these are not implemented. If this could not be implemented before the implementation of  report of 7^th CPC , it will be of no use.

            Postal staff in each cadre is facing lot of hardship due to acute shortage of staff, because the recruitment is not being done on the basis of actual sanctioned strength. If staff shortage is met out more than 50% problems will be solved automatically.

            One of the most burning problems is the harassment of staff in all cadres in the name of implementation of various schemes and services and trade union victimization. CBS and CSI has become a very serious problem. Without developing proper infrastructure these schemes are being implemented and staff is facing more difficulties and harassment from administration as well as public. More and more staff is being made victim under contributory negligence factor. If any union representative raises his voice against all these excesses he is victimized.

            This state of affairs on the part of administration cannot be tolerated more.

            Therefore the Federal Secretariat of NFPE has decided unanimously to go on 48 hours Strike on 1^st and 2^nd December-2015.

            NFPE call upon the entirety of Postal, RMS and GDS employees to make all efforts to  make the 48 hours strike a historic success and make the department  and Government  of India  to understand  that Postal Employees  will not leave  their genuine  demands and will always remain on the path of struggle.

            Unitedly we fight we will win. We have won on so many occasions and this time also we will win.

UNITY FOR STRUGGLE AND STRUGGLE FOR UNITY.

Inquilab Zindabad

Postal Unity Zindabad

NFPE  Zindabad.

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CONFEDERATION NATIONAL SECRETARIAT DECIDED TO ORGANIZE NATION WIDE CAMPAIGN AND PROTEST PROGRAMME AGAINST THE NEGATIVE ATTITUDE OF THE NDA GOVERNMENT TOWARDS CENTRAL GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES DEMANDS.

2015 NOVEMBER 2^nd TO 6^th

INTENSIVE CAMPAIGN AMONG THE CENTRAL GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES BY ORGANIZING GENERAL BODY MEETINGS, CONVENTIONS, OFFICE TO OFFICE SQUAD WORK, DISTRIBUTION OF PHAMPLETS AND POSTERING

2015 NOVEMBER 6^th

NATIONWIDE MASS DHARNA AT ALL IMPORTANT CENTRES

2015 NOVEMBER 19^th

(a)   MASSIVE DHARNA AT JANTAR MANTAR, NEW DELHI. ALL NATIONAL JOINT COUNCIL OF ACTION LEADERS (RAILWAY, DEFENCE & CONFEDERATION) AND ALL STANDING COUNCIL MEMBER WILL SIT ON DHARNA.

(b)   NATIONWIDE PROTEST DEMONSTRATIONS IN FRONT OF ALL WORK SPOTS AND OFFICES.

Dear Comrades,

The National Secretariat Meeting of the Confederation held at Hyderabad on 09^th October 2015 while endorsing the decision of the National Joint Council of Action (Railway, Defence & Confederation) to organize massive protest dharna at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi on 19^th November 2015 and also Nationwide Protest Demonstration in front of all works spot & offices, has decided to further intensify the protest action against the negative attitude of the NDA Government by organizing the following programmes: -

(1)   2015 November 2^nd to 6^th - Campaign Week.

(2)   2015 November 6^th – Nationwide Mass Dharna at all Important centres.

The Campaign and Protest Dharna will be organized mainly on the following three issues: -

(1)   Non Settlement of any of the legitimate demands raised by the JCM Staff Side, National Council by the NDA Government.

(2)   Causing engineered delay by the Government in the submission of 7^th CPC report by granting four months extension upto 31^st December 2015, even when the Pay Commission was ready to submit its report within the stipulated time i.e. 28^th August 2015.

(3)   Unwarranted intervention of the Finance Ministry in the independent functioning of the Pay Commission by issuing a statement asking the 7^th CPC to factor into its report the fiscal concern of the government and thereby to pressurize the commission not to recommend wage rise on the basis of a sound and scientific formulation.

All affiliated organizations and C-O-Cs are requested to implement the above campaign and protest programme throughout the country in a most befitting manner.

Yours fraternally,

(M. Krishnan)

Secretary General

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Letter from our GS to Hon'ble Secretary ,Dept. of Posts regarding Untold sufferings faced by the workings staff in CBS rolled out offices throughout the Country – Immediate and personal intervention is requested.

ALL INDIA POSTAL EMPLOYEES UNION GROUP 

‘C’

CHQ: Dada Ghosh Bhawan, 2151/1, New Patel Road, New Delhi - 110008

Ref: P/4-4/CBS-CIS                                                                                           Dated – 20.10.2015

To,

Ms. Kavery Banerjee

Secretary,

Department of Posts,

Dak Bhawan, New Delhi 110 001.

Madam,

Sub: - Untold sufferings faced by the workings staff in CBS rolled out offices throughout the Country – Immediate and personal intervention is requested– Reg.

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 hardwares. 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 net work 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.

                                                                                         

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  looses  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.

Furher, 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, net work, 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   atleast 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

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CABINET APPROVES BONUS CALCULATION CEILING TO RS 7,000/-.

            The Cabinet on Wednesday decided to double the wage ceiling for calculating bonus to Rs 7,000 per month for factory workers and establishments with 20 or more workers.

            “The Payment of Bonus (Amendment) Bill, 2015 to enhance the monthly bonus calculation ceiling to Rs 7,000 per month from existing Rs. 3,500 was approved by Union Cabinet here,” a source said after the Cabinet meeting.

          The amendment bill will be made effective from April 1, 2015. Now the bill will be tabled in Parliament for approval.

          The bill also seeks to enhance the eligibility limit for payment of bonus from the salary or wage of an employee from Rs. 10,000 per month to Rs. 21,000.

      The Payment of Bonus Act 1965 is applicable to every factory and other establishment in which 20 or more persons are employed on any day during an accounting year.

        The bill also provides for a new proviso in Section 12 which empowers the central government to vary the basis of computing bonus.

          At present, under Section 12, where the salary or wage of an employee exceeds Rs. 3,500 per month, the minimum or maximum bonus payable to employees are calculated as if his salary or wage were Rs. 3,500 per month.

         The last amendment to both the eligibility limit and the calculation ceilings under the said Act was carried out in 2007 and was made effective from April 1, 2006.

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DECLARATIONS OF ASSETS & LIABILITIES BY PUBLIC SERVANTS UNDER SECTION 44 OF LOKPAL & LOKAYUKTAS ACT 2013- EXTENSION OF LAST DATE OF FILING OF RETURNS FROM 15 TH OCTOBER 2015 TO 15 TH APRIL 2016.

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ENHANCEMENT OF THE CEILING OF BONUS.

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India Post may sell life insurance policies.

• Mahua Venkatesh and M Rajendran, Hindustan Times, New Delhi
  |   
•  Oct 10, 2015 

If all goes according to plan, India Post will soon offer life insurance products as part of a broader strategy to give its millions of customers a suite of financial and savings instruments ranging from small savings, fixed deposits, insurance and mobile wallets. A specific policy for the girl child, with a maximum assured sum of Rs 10 lakh, is also on the cards.

The move is part of the postal department’s strategy to modernise its services, leveraging its network of 160,000 post offices , 45,000 postmen and 250,000 extra-departmental employees, who would be trained to serve as personnel financial advisers in remote villages.

“We are looking to revamp our life insurance business in a big way in 2016...at present, we offer our own life insurance products in a very limited manner only to postal staff and a few government officials,” Kavery Banerjee, secretary, department of post, told HT.

India Post will soon approach the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) for its approval to launch more insurance products.

At present, India Post has a total corpus of Rs 56,000 crore under its insurance segment, which offers postal life insurance (PLI) and rural postal life insurance (RPLI). “We are looking at a 500% increase in the next two to three years,” Banerjee said.

India Post has managed to sell 7 million policies under PLI while 23 million under RPLI. It is also looking at tie-ups with general insurance companies at a later stage to offer non-life products.

Besides, India Post will also start selling Atal Pension Yojana, a government-backed pension scheme, which was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in May this year. Until August, banks have managed to induct only about 500,000 subscribers into the scheme, which mainly targets the unorganised sector.

The finance ministry, which has set a target of 20 million subscribers by December 31 this year, has also asked banks to chalk out individual strategies to expand the reach of the pension scheme.

//copy// HT

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ORDER OF PRODUCTIVITY LINKED BONUS FOR THE YEAR 2014-2015 ISSUED.

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