India Post plans setting up of more than 200 self-booking kiosks in next two years

New Delhi: If you have ever faced 'unapologetic' behaviour of postal assistants while booking your consignments at any window of the post offices, you have a reason to smile as such incidents are now going to be a thing of the past.

The Department of Post, which works under the Ministry of Communications led by Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, has chalked out a strategy to establish over 200 'self-booking kiosks' at different public places in the next two years. The decision in this regard has been taken after the successful implementation of the department's pilot project that was started about six month ago in the cities of Bangalore and New Delhi.

According to a senior official, who wished not to be named, the establishment of 'self-booking kiosks' is the part of the Union Minister's mandate given to the Department of Post to make India Post a best service provider after it came to his notice that despite having a huge network of over 1.50 lakh post offices across the country, India Post has witnessed a shortfall in consumer base.

"The self-booking kiosks would prove to be a game-changer for the India Post as general masses would use it like ATM machines to book their items without any human intervention. The process would be fully automated and consumers would get the option to pay the postage fee of their items by using different means of digital payment," the official said, adding that the Smart Post Kiosk app, which can be downloaded through the Google play store, would provide all the information about the availability of services and location of the kiosks.

"Most of the 'self-booking kiosks' would be established in areas that witness a majority of footfalls during the day, while some of such kiosks would also be set up in residential areas. All kiosks would be functional for 24x7," the official said, adding that parcels weighing upto 2kg would also be booked through self-booking kiosks.

Explaining about the booking process, the official said, "At first, the customer would have to select from the options of speed post, registered post, parcel, etc. The customer would also have to mention the place of delivery. After that the particular item would be weighed and according to the weight of the item, the machine would show postal charges to be levied for a particular item. On payment of the charges, the machine would generate a bar-coded receipt that to be pasted on the envelope."

"On following all the steps, machine would book the item and generate a receipt showing all the booking details and expected time of delivery of the item," the official said.