Postmen deliver Rs 9 crore to account holders' doorsteps in Pune

Pune: Postmen from the Pune region postal department have delivered Rs9 crore collectively to account holders of different banks at their doorstep during the lockdown.

Postal officials said 3,600 postmen delivered the amount in cash through 42,000 transactions — the highest in the two years since the India Post Payments Bank (IPPB) service had started.

The Pune region postal department caters to four districts — Pune, Ahmednagar, Solapur and Satara.

Officials said the postal department had been flooded with requests for the service since the lockdown was imposed — the response to the facility was tepid before that.

“The state government had transferred money into the accounts of direct benefit transfer beneficiaries (in Sherechiwadi village, Satara district), many of them of whom were stuck indoors. They were desperate for cash, but had no way to access the bank branches or ATMs,” Col SFH Rizvi, postmaster general, Pune region, said.

Manoj M Pawar, Sherechiwadi branch postmaster, explained the benefits of the Aadhaar-enabled payment services (AePS) of IPPB to the villagers. He got in touch with the account office and then assembled the villagers outside the gram panchayat building to deliver the cash, while implementing social distancing norms and other precautions.

Explaining how the system works, T Nirmala Devi, the director of postal services, Pune region, said, “IPPB provides inter-operable banking services to the customers of any bank. With AePS (a free service), anyone with a bank account linked to their Aadhaar card can perform basic banking functions, such as cash withdrawals and balance inquiry, at their doorstep. All they have to do is place a request at the nearest post office. A postman then visits the customer’s house to authenticate his/her identity and delivers cash.”

“A network of approximately 2,500 post offices has been involved in the region,” Rizwi said.