PREFACE TO CADRE RESTRUCTURING

As already notified, a meeting of the committee constituted for looking into promotional prospects of IPs/ASPs is scheduled to be held on 18/10/2011 under the Chairpersonship of Member (P) in K.R.Murthy Room, Dak Bhawan, New Delhi. Punjab CS is under immense pressure to attend it. So keeping in view of the sentiments of IP/ASP of Punjab Circle and other like-minded IP/ASP from other Circles, it has been decided by the President of Punjab wing IPASP Association to depute CS Punjab to join the meeting in the larger interest of the cadre. It is now nearly thirty years since the 2^nd review proposal is hanging in the files of Directorate. And, this is almost the first positive sign that is in the offing so we should grab it for possible betterment with both hands. Moreover, this is the correct platform to realize the department that IPs/ ASPs are being deprived of their legitimate rights thereby the deterioration in postal services being offered by the Department. The Department is going on the way to convert it into a dynamic organization with projects like changing ambience of the offices, providing good working environment to the staff, providing comfort to potential customers or visitors and various long lasting projects like Digitization of Records, Core Banking, Mail Optimization, Consumer Price Index, Aadhaar Technology, Biometric systems etc etc... All these projects are being implemented with the support and incessant hard work of IP cadre. Thus, it will not be wrong to say that the total responsibility for successful implementation of the various innovative schemes has virtually devolved on the IPs and ASPs. Without having adequate staff in Group ‘B’ these cannot be implemented in the manner department intends. There is also extreme stagnancy and resultant frustration amongst the incumbents of the cadre. Even after acquiring long years of experience and expertise, they remain and mostly retire in the ASP cadre. Hence, the only solution with the department is cadre review. With the discernible motive, following proposal will be a part of discussion.

1.    Upgradation of all the Sub divisions to PS Group ‘B’ divisions with independent charge and powers as presently divisional heads have. The present divisions manned by SPO/SSPOs may be upgraded to Class-I and entrusted with the Technology, Project Arrow, Mail optimization, recruitment and PLI/RPLI work that has been recently decentralized.

2.  The Association should not have any objection to surrender 64 Sr. Postmaster posts presently held by IPs/ASPs, subject to the condition that equal number of posts are created in Circle offices/Regional offices and in divisions commensurate to the work load under matching saving. This will also be a solution to the query raised by DOPT with the question how department is retaining operational (Postmaster cadre) and ASP/SP (Administrative Cadre) in one hierarchy. In that case General line officials should not have right to enter in PS Group “B” as they can retain 52 Sr. Postmaster posts and 141 HSG-I posts as per DOPT orders.

Named comments and suggestion are solicited.