Post offices to be turned into e-centres

The government has taken a series of programmes, aiming to revamp the activities of post offices across the country along with providing more services.

According to an official document, a total of 8,500 post offices will be turned into e-centres by June, 2017.

This project, considered to be an important milestone in achieving the "Vision-2021", aims at bridging digital divide between the rural and urban people by giving them facilities to have access to modern ICT based technologies.

The government has also planned to expand the electronic money order service to the remote areas of the country.

This service was commercially launched on a limited scale (in 104 post offices) on May 1, 2010. Because of overwhelming demand, this service has now been expanded to 1,150 post offices, including all district head post offices and upazila post offices.

The regular paper based money order service seemed to be a time consuming, expensive and inefficient approach of remitting money to any part of the country. There was a demand for quick transfer of money to locations where the beneficiaries can collect and use it instantly.

Later, Bangladesh Post Office launched a new money order service named Electronic Money Transfer Service (EMTS), commonly known as Mobile Money Order Service.

The official document said that the government decided to bring the grassroots people under the banking service through the Postal Cash Card.

Postal Cash Card is now in operation in 31 post offices of Dhaka and Comilla. This service will be gradually expanded to those post offices which have more commercial importance.

This card will minimise the risks of carrying cash and enable customers to reap the benefit of encashment and remittance in post office counters and also ATM booths. This card may also act equally as Debit Card, Credit Card and Plastic Money.

The postal department has taken a project to strengthen the postal transportation system to provide e-commerce, m-commerce and logistic services to the rural people. Under the project, the department will procure 118 vehicles within June, 2017.

It has also taken another project to construct or repair 270 dilapidated post offices by June 2018.

Bangladesh Post Office is now implementing a project named "Process Automaton of Postal Department". This project primarily aims at automating the activities of 134 offices, including 71 head post offices and 13 main and sorting offices, through computer hardware and an integrated web based application software.

A plan has also been taken to construct ICT based 1,000 rural post offices and automation of 1,438 post offices by June next year.

Another project has been taken to reform post office services by June 2018 and construct central postal data recovery centre in Jessore by June 2018.