Andhra mulls roping in Postal Dept for various govt schemes

Hyderabad: Andhra Pradesh Chief Secretary I Y R Krishna Rao on Saturday emphasised the need to leverage rural post office networks for financial inclusion and delivery of state government releases, including salaries to anganwadi workers and payment of utility bills, among others.

"The utilisation of the rural postal network by the State government should be further explored and expanded," an official release quoted Rao as saying.

He was reviewing the aspect of coordination with the Postal Department for financial inclusion programme of the state government at the Secretariat here.

The Postal Department is already involved in the distribution of wages of NREGS and pensions in 383 mandals out of a total of 661 in the state.

"The department had 8,793 branch post offices and 1,503 sub post offices and 59 head post offices spread across 661 mandals of the state. All of them could be utilised for delivery of all government services and releases to farmers, widows, students and also SHG groups as part of the financial inclusion programme," Rao added.

He said the State Rural Development Department would be asked to give a feed back on the ongoing programmes and the feasibility of utilising the entire postal network in other remaining mandals for a variety of other services and deliveries.

According to the official, the number of other government schemes that could be brought under the postal network were disbursements of the 'Ma Inti Mahalakshmi' scheme, salaries to anganwadi workers, Janani Suraksha scheme of Health department, collection of electricity, water and other bills, municipal taxes, sales tax, etc, payment of scholarships, allowances to the disabled in areas in which their network exists.

Possibility of sale of non-judicial stamp papers through rural post offices involving government schemes like sale of agricultural inputs would also be examined, he added.