POSTAL ASSISTANT CADRE DESERVES HIGHER PAY SCALE FROM 7TH CENTRAL PAY COMMISSION.
Government of India has constituted 7th Central Pay Commission. All
Federations and Unions/Associations will be submitting their memorandums to the
Pay Commission, either jointly or separately. Everybody wants Pay
Commission to examine and consider their demands regarding revised pay scales
of their category, judiciously and dispassionately, so that justice will be
done to each cadre. National Federation of Postal Employees (NFPE) and
all its affiliates will be submitting memorandum on each and every cadre of the
Department of Posts and shall try its best to get a favourable recommendation
from Pay Commission in respect of Pay Scales of each cadre including Gramin Dak
Sevaks. We are also exploring the possibility of submitting a joint memorandum
by the entire staff side of the Department of Posts. Regarding common
demands of entire Central Government Employees staff side, JCM National Council
and Confederation of Central Govt. Employees & Workers shall submit
memorandum to 7th CPC. Before that every attempt including agitation will
be made to get the terms of reference of the Pay Commission amended, to include
the proposal submitted by the Staff Side viz; date of effect from 01-01-2014,
DA merger, Interim Relief, inclusion of GDS, inclusion of those appointed after
01-01-2004 in the old statutory pension scheme, Labour representative in Pay
Commission, settlement of existing anomalies, Norms of fixing minimum wage,
Party in Pension, Cashless-hassle free medicl facilities etc.
As far as AIPEU Group-C (CHQ) is concerned our main concern and responsibility
is to ensure justified and better pay scales and other benefits to the Postal
Assistant and allied cadre. We firmly believe that this time the Postal
Assistant cadre and also all its allied cadres and promotional cadres shall get
better pay Scales from 7th CPC. In all other Central Government
departments each cadre is performing a particular nature of work only.
Income Tax Employees performs the duties related to Income Tax only.
Audit & Accounts employees perform the duties relating to Audit &
Accounts only. Bank Employees perform the duties related to Banking work
only. Insurance Employees perform the work related to Insurance
only. Likewise we can illustrate any number of examples. In all
these cases, it can be seen that the employees of all other departments are
specialised to work in their own particular stream of office work only.
Contrary to this, there is only one cadre in the entire Central Government
departments which performs more than ten types of different specialised duties
related to different sections and the name of that cadre is Postal
Assistant. They have to learn and perform Banking work related to Savings
Bank and Savings Certificates. They have to learn and perform Insurance
work relating to Postal Life Insurance including acceptance of policy proposal,
premium collection to maturity closure and payments etc. They have to
perform the Accounts work in Accounts Branches of each Head Post Offices, they
have to do Treasury work in all Post Offices, they have to perform the duties
related to Mails, Sorting, delivery of all types of postal articles, they have
to run financial services such as Money Orders including Electronic Money
transfer, they have attend counter duties relating to booking of Registered,
Speed Post, Money orders etc., They have to sell stamps and also application
forms. They have to perform the work of Public Relation Inspectors.
They have to perform the duties of Business Development activities and also as
Marketing Executives. After introduction of high-Technology in all areas
of work in Post Offices including Multi-purpose counter machines, Core Banking,
PLI Computerisation, Online transactions, Accounts computerisation etc. each
and every Postal Assistants is well versed with the computer-related work and
some Postal Assistnts are engaged as System Administrators to set right the
faults in the system and also to train the staff as and when new technology
softwares are introduced. Government has allotted 5000 crores for 100%
computerisation of Post Offices. Over and above all Postal Assistants are
performing the duties of Postmasters which involves supervision of all the
above mentioned work.
Thus unlike, any employee working in any other departments of Central Govt, or
public sector undertakings, Postal Assistant Cadre is an all-in-one-cadre and
hence called a “unique” cadre without any comparison. Naturally such a cadre
deserves a better deal from the 7th Central Pay commission.
