NATIONAL FEDERATION
OF POSTAL EMPLOYEES
1st
Floor, North Avenue Post office Building, New Delh
Ref:
PF/NFPE/CBS Dated
– 27.06.2014
To
Ms Kaveri
Banerjee
Secretary
Department
of Posts
Dak Bhawan,
New Delhi – 110001
Madam,
Sub: - Incalculable miseries and untold suffering to the operative
staff in CBS rolled out offices – Immediate remedial and rescue operations
sought for – reg.
At the
outset, we appreciate the efforts leads to technological advancements and
extend our fullest cooperation in the journey to reach the desired goals of
implementing innovative customer centric services and operational efficiency
enhancement by inducting state of art technology.
But to our
dismay, the CBS migrated offices are now facing incalculable miseries and
untold sufferings due to lack of adequate network capabilities and software
support of the vendors. The following are the issues to be set right in war
foot manner at the initial stage itself otherwise leads to garboil and distress
among the stake holders especially among the working staff.
1Insufficient
bandwidth Network:
Providing of strong and stable network is base of successful implementation of
India Post project. Now almost all HOs have been given 2 MBPS
bandwidth line, LSG SOs 512 KBPS line and B and C class offices have been given
256 KBPS line. If ‘India Post Project-2012’ is fully implemented, all the work
of Post Offices will depend on these network. Present bandwidth speed is very
less and due to low bandwidth, Finacle page is either not opening and
some time opening very slowly. Due to this PO staff are forced to
work up to night 10 pm many days. In many occasions in every CBS migrated
office, the ‘Login’ is inconsistent and for each transaction “Login” is forced.
If CSI and PLI are migrated and placed on this network the situation may
further worsen. Hence we request to provide at least 4 MB bandwidth line to
HOs, 2 MB bandwidth line to LSG SOs and 1 MB bandwidth line to B and C class
offices.
2) Failure of Sify:
In
India Post Project 2012, NI Vender is Sify. On observation of quality and
quantity of service being provided by them it is very much proved that
M/S Sify is incapable to give service to this big department. They
do not have sufficient skilled manpower and it seems that they are not
intending to give good quality service also. At initial stage
itself they have not made proper survey of all offices. Before installing
and commissioning they were very keen on taking installation report from
concerned Postmasters/Sub Postmasters.
It is
told that, as per MOU, all offices should be provided with NSP-1 and NSP-2
lines. In almost all offices, NSP-1 is BSNL line and NSP-2 is either Sify
line or Airtel datacard. It is observed that in many offices they
have installed Airtel datacard ,where as Airtel signal is not
available at that place.
It is
also observed that M/S Sify is not recharging Airtel datacard
installed. Instead they are recharging on receipt of complaint from
concerned offices. By doing this they are deviating from MOU and leaving
the staff in the field in distress.
3) Finacle Problem:
If we
come to Finacle part, it is another tragedy. Initially it was
boosted that Finacle is fully foolproof software and successfully implemented
in many banks. We could not understand why Infosys is not utilizing
experience gained in banks and implementing here. There are
so many bugs in the software and more surprisingly even after lapse
of 6 months of implementation, nothing is changed. All the issues
raised at the time of January-2014 is still not resolved. Moreover
Finacle server becomes inaccessible many time in peak business hours or
responds very slow. It is a naked truth that we are losing clientle and
distancing from the customers only due to faulty service of vendors.
4) Lack of Guidance:
No
separate rulings are received to suit Finacle Environment. No authorities are
giving authoritative guidance on many issues.
For example
! Role of SOSB
in HO after implementation of Finacle at SOs,
2 Role of SBCO at HO
3 Fate of manual records on
transfer accounts from one Finacle office to other etc.
5) Supply of Printers and Computers:
At
initial stage new Computers and printers are supplied to pilot
offices. Rest of the offices are having more than 5 year
old Computers and Printers which are not suitable to present
scenario. Administration is pressing hard to migrate offices
without supplying required hardware. The old computers and peripherals either
to be revamped or replaced to make it compatiable to the present environment.
6) Problem of User credentials:
One
each User credential is given to trained staff. But it is not
clearly told what action to be taken while SPM/PA goes on leave especially in B
class offices. As sharing of user credential is very
risky and dangerous, alternative arrangement should be made immediately.
7) Due to
slow network and frequent failure of server customers of the department are
frustrated and moving out the department and needed immediate attention.
8. You may
aware that we are struggling with outdated Computers and peripherals, which
were purchased during the year 2000 to 2005 and immediate supply of needy new
hardware to ensure the technological transformation in and effective manner.
9. Even
proper up gradation of CPU is not made in many areas and the Software loaded is
upto Windows XP in most of the offices. Presently it is a fact that windows XP
is not supported by the Microsoft with updates.
10. Finacle
can be better loaded with Windows 7 and hence the officers at ground level are
pressurized to use pirated version of Windows 7, which may lead to litigation
with Microsoft apart from non supporting with updates.
11. The MOU
made with M/s Sify, for net work integration is limiting to low bandwidth such
as 256 Kbps to 512 Kbps in many areas, serving with 1 server and 4 to 5 nodes,
resulting in sluggish connectivity and takes hours together to transform the
data. This results in hang over and the transactions could not be able to be
made at the instant, as the Department expects, It requires atleast 2 to 4 Mbps
and M/s Sify refused to increase the bandwidth now.
12. Further
in the Data Centre, it requires to the level of 400 Mbps on the Network to
receive the Data transmitted at a time from all the 680 offices but Sify is
learnt to be provided with a minimum of 200 Mbps capacity. This affects the
receipt of data from the end users at a time and take hours to complete the
process. Further expansion is required when there is further migration.
13. The area
of occupation in the main server at Mumbai maintained by M/S Reliance Ltd. is
also not sufficient, which results in sluggish transmission of data from the
entire 680 offices at present, at a time and even the validation cannot be made
before 8:00 PM or 10:00 PM on all the days.
14. End of
day process cannot be made even on daily basis and the staff have to wait for
the nod from the Infosys even after midnights on several days and at times it
can be made on the next day morning. Even the women employees are compelled to
complete the EOD process in midnights and their husbands or wards waiting till
midnights to take them to home.
15. Even the
Help desk provided is not answering and the end users are taken to task and
receiving brick bats from the irate public.
16. This
results in closing of accounts in large numbers that too, can be made not on
the date of presentation but after few days and our Department looses large
chunk of customers, because of the miscalculations, wrong estimations and over
ambitious activities and inadequate technological support.
17. Even the
first and prestigious ATM of our Department unveiled by the ex Finance Minister
Sri. P. Chidambaram at T. Nagar HO is not functioning from the date of
installation and only 10 ATM cards are supplied on the first instant, that too
only to the staff and some friendly users of T. Nagar HPO. But the ATM is
provided with 24x7 A/C and a paid Guard, making huge loss to the Department and
receiving severe criticism from the Print media.
18. The
women employees should be relieved from this area of operation, till the
situation improves, in order to avoid late night stays at offices inviting
gender problems and unsafe returns to their home at midnights.
19. Further,
adequate hardware and infrastructure should be given immediately to the CBS
migrated offices with sufficient man power and proper remuneration for the
extended hours, the staffs re serving.
20. In spite
of all above cited problems the Postal staff is being worked on finacle
software as matter of challenge and trying to give best services to the
customers. In spite of all efforts the customers are not satisfying/delighting
which hampers the reputation of the department. No PO which is upgraded with
finacle are being closed before 8 PM every day. We are ready to work hard
provided, solution for above problems are to be solved.
It is
requested to sort out all the issues arising out of the CBS Migration and all
the vendors need to be instructed to provide all the technological support as
required by the field staff. As this is the pilot and sorting stage, if we
failed to pull up the vendors to the level of expectation and necessity, later
full implementation, restoration may be difficult with this vendor support.
It is
further requested to spare some time and provide opportunity to present and
brief our case in person for the welfare of our department staff and the
clientle. Your immediate intervention as if house on fire is requested.
A line in reply is
highly appreciated.
With profound
regards,
Yours faithfully,
(M. Krishnan)
Secretary General
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