Wednesday, June 15, 2016

DHARNA IN FRONT OF O/O CHIEF PMG, TN ON 17.6.2016 AND THE DEMANDS FOR YOUR READY REFERENCE


AIPEU P3 CHQ

Ref: P/4-4/CBS                                                                                                       Dated – 26.05.2016

To

The Secretary
Department of Posts
DakBhawan, New Delhi – 110001

Sir,

Sub: -  Miseries and untold sufferings being faced due to hasty migrations of CBS & CIS through the nation – require immediateaction to avoid industrial action.

Ref: -   This union letters of even no. dated 20.01.2016, 11.02.2016 & 25.04.2016
                                                                              …

Apropos reference, it is dismayed to note that there is no tangible action taken so far in set righting the serious problems arisen due to hasty and hurried introduction of CBS and CIS without minding the ground realities and the situations prevailing at base levels. The officials are forced to suffer every day till late night with more tension besides mental torture.

There is poor access and even no access in Finacle continuously for the past 8 days throughout the Country affecting the public services very badly. This is because of exceeding the capacity of the servers provided by Infosys.  Many Circle Unions have conducted series of programme of trade union action including strike to restore the normal services in Finacle.However, the Department has shown scant regard to the references we made earlier and none of the issues have been properly settled. Even though, it was assured to our Secretary General during the close of March 2016 on 28.3.2016, that two addl. Servers will be provided to Data Centre in order to maintain the services by first week of April 2016, this was not done till date. The commitment was not executed till now. The problem become more aggressive. In the meanwhile, some of the base level officers are issuing Rule 16 charges for petty lapses without minding the sufferings and tortures the officials being met every day in the Finacle.

The following are the serious issues confronting the staff which should be resolved forthwith. In the event of no progress or settlement within a fortnight, the All India Union will issue strike notice soon in order to register our serious protest and continue the programme of action till a settlement is reached on the issues.

McCamish Issues:-

1.   Many policies appear in system admin queue even after disbursement is paid as there is no power to system admin then why there is system admin queue and for each such case CPC have to raise the ticket.
2.   There is no provision to view the reports of BO’s of HO’s inMccamish due to which HO’s are unable to tally the BO summary with Mc Camish.
3.   No deployment of posts have been done from the administrative offices to CPC’s whereas all the work relating to Insurance have been delegated to operative office. all CPC’s are working without establishment from the strength of HO’s and adequate staff is also not deployed at CPC’s.
4.   Issues for which tickets are raised are not resolved at earliest, sometimes issues are resolved after 20 days.
5.   There are good number of APS policies which are not migrated to mcCamish software.
6.   Out of 30 days of month reports are not accessible in almost 10- 15 days at evening when the offices have tally their accounts. Sometimes offices have to kept the money out of account and tally the accounts on next day.

Networking Issues

1. The contract have been assigned to sify technologies for providing NSP-1 and NSP-2. The service provider forprimary link i.e. NSP-1 is BSNL and Whenever NSP-1 get down in 80% offices network does not get on to NSP-2 automatically. The finacle is not accessible in NSP-2 and as far as the quality of NSP-2 is concerned, it overall results comes to be unfruitful. The expenditure which the department of posts is spending on NSP-2(dongle based) is all in vein. No outcome for good network is shown even after upgradation of bandwidth in class D and E Post Office. Whenever the ticket for non working of NSP-1 is raised the only reply from Sify side is that the problem is at the end of BSNL and no settlement is made till the BSNL restores its network. Offices are having their work held up for more than 10 days and in some instances for more than a fortnight. The higher offices forces the operative staff to clear their pending work in nearby feasible location which is not a proper way at all.

2. There is only one Circle Coordinator of Sify followed by one service engineer for 2 postal division. It is notpractically possible for this crew to rectify the major fault when fault persists in more than one location simultaneously. On the other side officials from Sify/Infosys/TCS used to direct the System Administrators to resolve the networking issue/other issues in Post Offices. And Ourdepartment denies to give a special grade to System Administrators.

Finacle
The main base for the non-accessibility of the Finacle server, is either with the Main server capacity or the programming done by the Infosys. Bandwidth alone is not the reason for the slowness in Finacle. So,server as in Railways has to be installed. If necessary post offices across the country may be divided into four zones and one server for each zone with inter accessibility may be installed. The bandwith for single handed and other S.Os should be increased. To overcome the existing problem additional servers shall be provided to bear the load.

1.   From the date of migration, the Finacle server is not running promptly and takes very much time in processingeven a single transaction.
2.   Agent portal is not working from last 10 days and not services of this portal is not resumed till date.
3.   Variety of services in Finacle Server found to be inaccessible on routine basis. Whenever one error rectified, another appears in a consecutive manner.
4.   Finacle works on the principle of maker and checker, but in single hand offices where only one official works, this concept of maker and checker not seems to be logical. Either the concept of maker and checker should be scrapped or the concept of single hand offices should be abolished. All single hand SO’s should be upgraded to Double Hand SO’s.
5.   Whenever the deposits for SSA, SB and PPF is made, the transid directly enters into posted stage and no modification/deletion is possible in this stage. In the later stage supervisor finds any mistake during verification, the only way to get rid is the verification of that particular transid. For this the only solution is that the depositmade by counter clerk firstly have to enter in the entered stage which allows the rectification of any kind ofmistake.
6.   DMCC is pressurizing to execute EOD on 2000 hours daily. And after this they are not providing any support to the staff who is working late hours in the night. Workload of transactions is that much that it is not possible to finish the work well before 2000 hours.

The following additional issues have also to be sorted out.
Sl. No.
Description
Remarks
01
Ensuring increase in capacity of Server / Core
Increase the capacity of Server and processor.  Upgradation may find a solution for slow access at user end level.
02.
Sify connectivity issues
Directorate has informed a year ago to upgrade bandwidth from 128 kbps to 256, 256 kbps to 512, 512 to 1 mbps, 1 to 2 mbps.  But no action has been taken in this aspect except at HOs.
03.
DC Closure
DC closure is not done on daily basis which results officials to wait beyond office hours and delay in executing HISCOD.
04.
MIS reporting Server
MIS report Server is not at all accessible for most of the days.  Capacity of reporting server should be upgraded for easy access.
05.
Ensuring proper working of NSP-II
In almost all the offices, except HOs, NSP-II is not at all working resulting non accessibility of Finacle/Mccamish during the down time of NSP-I.

Most of the rural BSNL exchanges are not electronic exchanges where the broad band is frequently disconnected due to power failures as they have not been properly provided with UPS/Generator facilities.  In these places, ensuring proper working of NSP-II is needed.
06.
SOL change menu option is to be given to Divisional System Administrator
Deputation or transfer orders are placed at DO level.  During deputation of a PA to other place,  the SOL of a PA may be changed at DO level easily.

At present, it is being done at CPC and it gets delayed or changed after completion of deputation.
07.
CSAC
Now, Supervisor can release the CPA under their SOL only except at HOs.  All Supervisors under one HO may be permitted to release other Supervisors/CPAs under the same HO. 
08.
Prior intimation in case of particular menu is disabled during slowness time
Some menu options are being disabled for testing slowness of Finacle but the same is not properly communicated to gross root level.  Hence the CPAs keep on trying the menu without knowing the fact and in some times the same transaction is being done for more than one number of times. Without proper intimation, disabling of menus should not be done by infosys.
09.
Maintenance/ migration time
It is not clear that the slowness is because of migration/ DC closure.  Some times, restarting the server is needed at Data centre.

These types of works may be fixed by the end of the week and the server may be exclusively used for these purposes at that time.  In these situations, we may be intimated the fact and be asked not to do transactions at these time.

For instance, we may be asked to complete the works on before 1300 hrs on Saturdays.  After that, they may proceed with either maintenance work of Server or Migration activities without interruption.


  (i)         In SSA, total deposit in a Financial year should not exceed Rs.1,50,000/- but there is no provision to stop any excess deposit in any single account. The official as well as the public suffers due to excess deposit in SSA account. Mechanism to disallow any excess deposit above the limit should be provided.
(ii)         For Cash Certificates, either the present system of Certificates with specified denomination has to be dispensed with as in banks for Fixed Deposit or Higher denomination up to Rs.100000/- to be introduced for all Post Offices as printing of cash certificates consumes much time.
(iii)         The supervisors should be given option to reconcile the errors committed by the clerks at counter while making deposit entry with reverse option as in PPF deposits.
(iv)         In RD accounts Pre Mature closure is not allowed if any advance deposits is made, till the lapse of the period up to which advance deposits has been made by the depositor. It denies the right of the depositor to close the account prematurely. Provision may be made to close the accounts with advance deposits with provision to recover the rebate given for the advance deposits.
 (v)         There is no difference between PLI AND RPLI policy  numbers as far as new accepted policies concerned, so as to get the print outs in the relevant PD DOCUMENT.
(vi)         Similar in case of AEA, GY, CHILDREN POLICIES; WLA; CWLA etc.. where in NIC it can be differentiated.
(vii)         While indexing new RPLI proposals at Counters, collection head is defaulted set as PLI , and it is very difficult to refund the same if it is wrongly generated as PLI since for the said type of work, as usual, (i) FOLDER IS TO BE CREATED(ii) ECMS work is to be completed (iii) DATA ENTRY WORK IS TO BE DONE by giving irrelevant information   -    then only the same can be rejected at QUALITY CHECKER STAGE and it takes minimum 10 days to refund the amount.
(viii)         In most of the days, though entry has been made in DATA ENTRY and submitted properly, the status of the said policy/proposal will show as “ DATAENTRY RESERVED” ONLY.
(ix)         If the address of the insurant is to be changed, letter only is generated but the same could not be viewed in policy document which is very essential.
 (x)         Instructions have been issued to scan old PLI /RPLI documents for digitization with time frame.  High speed scanners are not available and it is not possible to scan with the existing scanner.

Other Issues: -

1. Shortage of Staff: - There is no recruitment from last three years and the situation is that all triple hand SO’s are functioning with two official and like-wise double hand SO’s are working with only one official. In case of LSG promotions when PA refused to accept the said promotion the post becomes vacant but the work is maintained by some other PA, resulting into more burden on PA. Therefore, it is suggested that the vacant posts of LSG may be included in the recruitment of PA’s. Same situation is noticed in case of LR Posts; all are lying vacant.

2. Introduction of new branches: -  More number of branches have been introduced in the recent year. For example CPC(PLI/RPLI) have been created at HO level, CPC(CBS) have been created at Circle Level. But there is no provision in the establishment for the said branches. The staff for the functioning of these CPC’s have been brought from other operative offices which suffers smooth working of those offices. 

3. Infrastructure Problem: -  On the one side department is transforming into a new CBS environment, and on other side infrastructure situation is very bad for example UPS and Genset of most of the offices are lying out of order and furniture is not in adequate position. Our department is spending crores of rupees on these private companies and harassing own staff up to a great extent.

4. Business hours of P.O.s:-The recent decision of the Directorate that the business hours of the Post Office shall be five hours for the monetary transactions has not been implemented in many circles. The Chief PMG, Tamil Nadu circle without minding the sufferings due to the Finacle has not only implemented the Directorate order but also sought reconsideration of the decision. This is causing a serious concern.

Apart from the above, the following major issues keep reappearing again and again:

1. Slowness in application, even collection could not be done properly.
2. Request not moving forward from one stage to another and it take too much time to load
3. New Business Indexing could not be done.
4. CSV update are in pending status from last four days.
5. ECMS correction stage error.
6. Letter generation issue is there.
7. Policy bond is not generated for the proposal request approved.
8. Premium collected from 10/03/2016 is not posted to the consent policies.
9. Many policies status is not changed
10.Multiple receipt has been generated for the same period for the same policies.

The above are only the important items which shall be attended with top priority as if fire on the top roof. We are expecting immediate and swift action from the administration to bring the Po work into normal by making all efforts. In the event of no improvement, the this Union will implement the decision of the Chandigarh CWC by conducting various programmes of action culminating to indefinite strike and notice will be served in the event of no response within a fortnight.

A line in reply about the action taken is highly solicited

Yours faithfully,

Sd/-
(R. N. Parashar)
General Secretary.