The department of posts is going to bring around 100 post offices in Jharkhand under the third phase of Project Arrow. This will take the total number of such post offices in the state to 131.
Post offices falling under the project provide all web-based postal services available in the country today, including instant money order and internet-connected free-of-cost information kiosks.
“The department is trying (at the central level) to get its own bandwidth to run Project Arrow post offices in the country. This will enable them to provide even faster services,” Jharkhand chief postmaster general Abhay S Prasad told FE here Wednesday.
Jharkhand has around 350-odd urban post offices and around 3,000 rural ones.
The first phase saw 4 post offices in the state brought under the project, between June and August of 2008. In the second phase, 27 more were included.
On an all-India basis, the second phase of the project targeted 500 post offices across 10 postal circles.
Jyotiraditya Scindia, minister of state for communications & IT, had earlier communicated to the postal circles to dedicate the post offices of the second phase to the nation by January 25. Scindia has also planned to launch a ‘blue book’ on the project in February that would serve as a guideline for all the 55,000 post offices in the country that would ultimately be brought under the project.
Prasad said, “We have not yet decided on the figure for the third phase. It will be around 100.” The 31 project post offices so far in the state cover the district headquarters.
The department of posts, which spent around Rs 3 crore to bring the 31 post offices under the project, will need around Rs 10 crore for the 100 of the third phase.