Post office on wheels: Postal services now at doorstep in Pune

Puneites from now on do not have to travel all the way to the neighborhood post offices to avail essential postal services like purchasing stamps or carrying out financial transactions.

The Pune region of India Post launched ‘Post office on wheels’, a mobile postal service that will visit various areas in the city to reach the doorsteps of citizens.

The flag-off ceremony of the mobile postal van was done by Dada JP Vaswani at the Sadhu Vaswani Mission on Tuesday.

Addressing the media, the post master general of Pune region Col (retd) KC Mishra said, “This service will enable senior citizens, housewives, the handicapped and others who cannot avail the services by coming all the way to the post office. The mobile postal van will carry the services to the doors of the residents, IT hubs and educational institutes.”

According to him, the mobile postal van will comprise two postal officials, apart from the driver and the tasking staff. When asked whether the van will travel to rural areas to offer the services, Mishra said, “The mobile van is a pilot project and will run through various parts of the city for the first couple of months. Its future activities will be planned.”

The mobile van will travel to 30 pre-notified locations for a week from 8 am to 8 pm equipped with all the facilities of a post office. After the first week, the van will travel to the next 30 locations in the city. “In this way, the pilot project can be tested throughout the city over weeks before people avail it and make it economically viable for us to carry the project forward,” said Mishra.

Vaswani, head of the Sadhu Vaswani Mission, became the first customer to avail the new service of India Post by opening an account with Rs5,000.