The Hindu Business Line : Post office turns a major employer

The Kadavanthra post office located in the upmarket Kochi suburb employs 11 regular staff, but has 26 deposit mobilisation agents: 13 under the Standard Agency System (SAS) and another 13 as Postal Mahila Pradhans.

"With just a couple of people to cater to the demands of the 26 agents and hundreds of savings customers every day, the staff have been coming under increasing pressure," some of the staff pointed out.

The Kottayam Head Post office, with less than 50 regular staff has close to 170 agents, Mr Thomas Pothen, Kerala President of the National Federation of Postal Employees, said. Almost 100 of them under the Standard Agency System focus on big-ticket collections such as National Savings Certificate, Monthly Income Scheme and Senior Citizens Schemes, while another 70 as Postal Mahila Pradhans, pursue smaller schemes such as recurring deposits.

"There are six clerical and two supervisory staff to cater to the demands of the 170 agents and multitude of customers," Mr Pothen said.

In effect, every regular employee of the post office seems to have generated close to three informal jobs among the postal deposit agents. But this thumb rule is not universal. This growth in numbers is not quite evident at the Ernakulam Head Post Office, which has close to 75 staff, but has only about 30 SAS agents and 7 Mahila Padhans.

"This is not a residential area," explained a senior post office official. "The staff here have to supervise the administrative and accounting duties of the sub-post offices, including Kadavanthra. Consequently, the employee-to-agent ratio here would be quite different."

Going by the thumb rule, the 1,54,919 post offices in the country employing 5,93,818 departmental and extra-departmental staff would have created several lakhs of informal jobs in the country.

The tumbling bank interest rates and resultant spurt in post office deposits have created unforeseen windfall for the post office deposit agents. As the volume of business has soared, the earnings of several of the agents have also grown correspondingly. The rich rewards and success stories reaped by the old timers have spurred thousands of new entrants into the field.

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