Post office ATMs to be set up before March 2012

 Rangachari (82), a retired postal service employee, dreads the beginning of each month when he must travel to the post office in West Mambalam, located one and half kilometres away from his house and stand in a queue for two hours to withdraw money from his postal savings account. "It is really tiresome," he said. "They don't have a separate bank. Whether you want to draw money, send a letter or speed post, it's the same counters for everybody. Unfortunately, I cannot avoid the trips as my pension gets credited into the same account."


Rangachari's troubles may soon be over. By December, ten post offices in Chennai will have ATMs through which people holding small savings accounts can draw money at any time during the working hours. "Simultaneously, work shall also be competed at a similar pace in other metro cities. This is all part of Phase I of this project, which involves setting up of ATMS in head post offices all over the country, including cities and district head quarters. We expect it to be completed before March 2012," said a senior postal official.

ATMs are a boon to many whose sole access to savings is the post office. There are more small savings accounts in the post office than in most of the commercial banks in the country, say postal authorities.


And each post office holds at least a few hundred accounts serving weaker sections such as senior citizens and villagers. Typically, at least a few hundred people are served by these accounts in each post office. In rural areas without bank branches, the post office is the only banking facility.

"The plan is to give an image makeover to the post office as a separate and complete banking entity," said the official. It may however, take a few years before even remote rural areas have access to modern banking facilities. "After all, we have 1,55,000 branches all over the country. Modernising all of them will definitely take time," he added.

India Post had first announced this project in February this year, but had been awaiting the Reserve Bank of India's approval to start the project in full swing. "It's all done now. We recently received RBI's permission to set up ATMs," said the official. "All that is left now is changing the selected site to a stronghold room to facilitate storage of money and also some civil engineering work like wiring and plastering."

Source:toi