Hyderabad’s Department of Posts will soon have an Automated Mail Processing Centre; it will be the third in the country after Delhi and Kolkatta.

The Rs 60-crore facility will take off with the foundation and an agreement for the supply of hardware and computerisation of post offices to be finalised in the second week of April. Killi Kruparani, the Union Minister of State for Communications, will be present.

This was decided at a meeting held in New Delhi between the Minister and officers of the Department of Posts. According to a Ministry press release, the Mail Processing Centre would be set up in Shamsabad Mandal on the outskirts of the city. Once the AMPC is installed, there will be no documentation required with respect to sorting, despatching and delivering of mails, which in turn will benefit the common man in a big way.

As the AMPC has the capacity to sort around 30,000 mails every hour, the delivery time of the letters and other items will be reduced by one day, the release added.

The Department has planned to modernise and computerise all the 1,55,000 post offices in the country at an outlay of Rs 4,700 crore. The objective is to connect all post offices through a single network and to provide a low power technology solution (ICT devices like netpads, computers) to each branch postmaster, to improve the level of services being offered to rural customers.

somasekhar.m@thehindu.co.in