KOCHI: Less than a year after the National Speed Post Centre (NSPC) Kochi was converted into a Speed Post Sorting Hub, as part of the postal department’s Mail Network Optimisation Project (MNOP), postal officials say that complaints have increased pertaining to delays in delivery. The postal department had started 89 hubs across the country in a bid to improve the quality of processing. But officials with the postal department stated that the result in effect was exactly opposite of what was intended. “A total of 369 post offices comes under the Kochi Speed Post hub, including those from Lakshadweep, Idukki, Changanassery, Aluva, Alappuzha, Thodupuzha, and Kottayam. The Kochi hub receives a minimum of 20,000 speed-post articles a day. As of now at the Kochi hub, there are only five sorting assistants and four employees to scan the articles. All this leads to slow processing of the articles and consequently the articles are delivered late,” said K Ravikkuttan, Postal Assistant, who is also the state president of National Federation of Postal Employees (Group C). “The other issue is that as per the current norms, speed-posts cannot be registered at all division offices and hence people have to rely on the few offices which offer speed-post services,” he added. However, Thomas Jacob, Superintendent of Railway Mail Service, who is in charge of the Kochi Speed Post Hub, said that there were not many delays and articles are delayed because most of the senders do not include the correct pincode or the receiver’s phone number. “The speed post article is monitored daily. Even the sender can track the article through our online service,” he added.
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