Postal services suspended across Chandigarh, Jalandhar, Ludhiana divisions

Postal services remained suspended in the region on Monday, leaving the customers in the lurch. No transactions were conducted in at least 165 post offices across Chandigarh, Jalandhar and Ludhiana divisions throughout the day.

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Attributing the suspension to major technical upgrade, the senior postal authorities have claimed that normal services will be restored from Tuesday.

Confirming the daylong outage, the Director Postal Services (Headquarters) in Chandigarh, Padmagandha Mishra, told The Tribune that the Department of Posts was in the process of rolling out the next generation APT application IT2.0, a major leap towards digital excellence under which the post offices are undergoing a major technical upgrade.

As part of this transformative initiative, the upgraded system will be implemented across all post offices in the region.

“To enable a seamless and secure transition to this advanced digital platform, a planned downtime was scheduled for today following which no public transactions were carried out at the post offices,” she said, while informing that this temporary suspension of services was necessary to facilitate data migration, system validations and configuration processes, ensuring that the new system goes live smoothly and efficiently.

Mishra disclosed that the APT application was designed to offer an enhanced user experience, faster service delivery and a more customer-friendly interface, reflecting the department’s commitment to deliver smarter, efficient and future-ready postal operations.

The DPS added that August 5 will also be observed as a no transaction day for the final rollout of the technical upgrade.

Meanwhile, the customers faced a harrowing time due to the suspension of postal services at all 56 post offices in Chandigarh division.

In the absence of any prior notice of shutdown, the customers kept visiting one post office after another, but to no avail.

“I have visited three post offices to book a parcel of rakhis to my brother settled abroad, but the services were suspended at all places,” rued a local resident, Radha Singh.

A few counters that were working at the GPO-17 witnessed a huge rush of customers. The majority of them failed to get their turn for availing of various services during the working hours.