MINIMISE USE OF POSTAL STAMPS TO SAVE MONEY, MANPOWER , ENERGY AND ABOVE ALL, THE ENVIRONMENT

Lucknow: To save crores of rupees to the exchequer every month as also curb cutting of trees, Governor Ram Naik has started a campaign to promote use of franking machines by government offices and bulk users to discourage postal stamps of low denomination.

Naik also raised the issue before President Pranab Mukherjee at a recently concluded two-day conference in Delhi and has written a letter to Union telecom minister Ravi Shankar Prasad in this regard, appealing to minimise use of postal stamps to "save money, manpower , energy and above all, the environment."

During an informal inspection of secretariat, Naik noticed dispatch staff was pasting 25 postal stamps of Re 1 and stamps of different denominations on various packets and envelopes. "I was taken aback to see that in a digital era, one person is deployed only to paste stamps manually," Naik told TOI on Saturday, after calling the post and telegraph staff to install franking machines. Now, one staff who used to dispatch 60 envelopes in a day completes his work in an hour," said Ram Naik, adding that the same staff disposes other duties in the remaining part of the day.

Postal department officials told ToI that despite their awareness campaign, there are hardly any offices using franking machine despite its advantage of saving money and time.

A senior functionary of the chief post master general office informed ToI that there are 17,000 post offices in the state and postal stamps are delivered from Nasik press to Lucknow and Kanpur and delivered all over the state. "If government departments use franking machine it would save lakhs of rupees every month as cost of the transportation from Nasik to the 17,000 post offices will also be saved," said the officer adding that on an average if postal stamps of Rs 5 lakh are used in each office in a month, Rs 10,000 will be saved by using franking machine, which gives impression of a postal stamp on the envelop. The franking machine can be recharged after payment of a certain amount to the post and telegraph department. 

Speaking to TOI, director of the post and telegraph Vivek Daksh confirmed that if most users go for franking machine, it definitely save lakhs of rupees every month. "On an average, our department sells postal stamps worth over Rs 15 lakh a day," said Vivek Daksh, adding that on the franking machine, government gives rebate also of 2%.

Ram Naik explained the cost of postal stamp is higher because the ink, printing and paper are of best quality, hence postal stamps of low value should be discouraged.