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.
