Nationwide postal strike from July 5

Mangalore, July 2: All India Postal Employees Union has decided to launch a nationwide indefinite strike from July 5.

The Joint Council of Action representing the National Federation of Postal Employees (NFPE), Federation of National Postal Organisations (FNPO), All India Postal Extra Departmental Employees Union (AIPEDEU) and the National Union of Gramin Dak Sevaks (NUGDS) have called the strike protesting against the reforms planned by the centre.

NFPE secretary general M Jayakrishnan said in a statement that the Postal Board's implementation of the recommendations made by Chicago-based consultants McKinsey for optimising the mail network will in fact result in the erosion of customers of India Post.

Addressing the media persons at Udupi on Friday, Joint Council of Action of Postal Employees, Udupi Division Convenor Suresh K alleged that the government which was not ready to implement many practical and viable suggestions made by the staff earlier citing financial constraints and limitations. Now the Centre forcing the half baked recommendations made by Mickensey Company upon postal employees, he added.

He said the recommendations include closing down of as many as 9797 post offices that constitute about 35 per cent of the total post offices in urban India. This will only benefit the courier companies to walk towards profitable business. The post of 'postman' is abolished. This further deteriorates the delivery efficiency. Speed post hubs are being introduced in Karnataka.

However, the measure is a huge loss to the exchequer and irreparable damage of losing the customers, he said and added that if all these retrograde measures are implemented in the name of mail network optimization, it will ultimately ruin the postal services.

He said the demands include government should immediately drop the idea of introducing the recommendations made by Mickensey company, filling up of the MTS vacancies in RMS, HB division by existing FTCL officials.

Non-filling of all vacant posts including sufficient LRs in NBCs in the circle including Bangalore metro, where the problems are more, approval of Rule 38 mutual transfers between postman and RMS cadres as both are identical cadres. Beisdes, separate identity for RLO unit and it should not be merged with the staff strength of the circle offices, better working arrangement, the unscientific eligibility criteria to write Grade 1 and PSS Group should be cancelled, OTA and OSA should be revised and the present system administrators should be promoted to PA/SA posts, he added.