Tech upgrade: Postal services across Chandigarh remain disrupted on Day 2

Day after complete suspension, postal services remained disrupted in the region on Tuesday as well.

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While no transaction was conducted in at least 165 post offices across Chandigarh, Jalandhar and Ludhiana divisions on Monday, the customers continued to face great hardship on Tuesday also with majority of the post offices grappling to resume normal operations even after what the department had claimed as the “major technological upgradation”.

A visit to several post offices in Chandigarh revealed that postal services remained disrupted throughout the day at majority of the total 56 locations while few were reportedly operating, but that also with frequent snags and poor connectivity issues.

Attributing the Monday’s suspension to major technical upgradation, the senior postal authorities had claimed that the services will be restored to normal from Tuesday onwards.

Contrary to the official claim, the staffers at most of the post offices maintained that the systems were not working since morning and they were struggling to cope up with the technological shift.

The disruption in postal services caused great hardship and inconvenience to the customers, who were either left to wait endlessly in the long queues or were asked to visit other post offices to get their work done.

When contacted, the Director Postal Services (Headquarters) in Chandigarh Padmagandha Mishra told The Tribune that the disruption was temporary and the services were made available at various post offices throughout the day even as the glitches kept surfacing at some centres.

The Department of Posts is 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 major technical upgradation.

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

For enabling a seamless and secure transition to this advanced digital platform, a planned downtime was scheduled for Monday following which no public transactions were carried out at the post offices yesterday.

This was done 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.