The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Steep fall in volume of personal mail

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Saturday, Sep 23, 2006
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Steep fall in volume of personal mail

Special Correspondent

Mobile phones and Net fuelling change

CHENNAI: There has been a big fall in the volume of personal mail, the Postal Department has acknowledged.

Radhika Doraiswamy, Chief Postmaster-General of Tamil Nadu Circle, speaking to presspersons on Friday, attributed it to the advent of technological innovations such as mobile phones and Internet.

[According to the Annual Report of the Postal department for 2005-2006, there was a 15 per cent fall in the traffic of unregistered mail in 2004-2005 compared to 2003-2004].

The officer, however, said the business mail accounted for 60 per cent of revenue of the department.

Social obligation

Noting that private couriers were functioning mostly in urban areas, she said it was the department that served the role of a communication provider in remote and rural areas. The social obligation, coupled with the decline in personal mail, made the department look to generating revenue from activities other than the conventional functions of mail management.

This was why the department had decided to undertake "retail post," through which it used its infrastructure to market certain products and services.

This helped the private sector to reach the rural market through the postal network.

Study materials by post

As part of the venture, the Postal department has agreed to sell home study course materials prepared by VETA, a private institution specialising in teaching of English, through its offices.

V. Rajagopalan, chairman, and V. Srinivasan, senior manager of VETA, said people in far-flung areas could obtain the materials through the postal infrastructure.

The materials would be available in head post offices (HPOs).

Those served by branch and sub-post offices could inform the local postal officials of their requirement and the officials, in turn, would get the materials from the HPOs.

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