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Title: Need to ameliorate the service conditions of village postal employees
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SHRI NIKHIL KUMAR (AURANGABAD, BIHAR): Sir, I bring to the notice of the Ministry of Communications, Department of Posts the sorry plight of Village Postal Employees. The institution of Village Postal Employees is nearly one hundred and fifty years old. They work in Village Post Offices delivering post to addresses often across the entire beat of a number of villages. In this regard though their duties are similar to the Postal employees who work in post offices located in urban areas, in some ways, their work load poses greater inconvenience to them than to their urban counterparts. The Village Postal Employees go around performing their duties serving a larger area and they manage to do this without the benefit of free and speedy transport. These employees, therefore, deserve to be treated on par with their urban counterparts but, to their misfortune, there is a wide difference between their pay, emoluments and other facilities. While the urban employees are entitled to and are paid a salary and emoluments, the Village Postal employees are only paid what is essentially’daily allowance and are not entitled to any other emoluments. This is an unfair disparity. It causes them entirely avoidable hardship and great inconvenience besides being highly demoralizing. This naturally impacts adversely on the performance of their duties. This cannot be a condition conducive to promotion of public interest while, on the other hand, it is undisputed that high morale is essential for securing efficient performance of such duties.
The Ministry of Communication is, therefore, requested to kindly look into and redress this justified grievance of the Village Postal Employees so as to provide them much needed relief.