Postal Service earns Tk 297.9m thru’ EMTS

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Sonia H Moni
Bangladesh Postal Office (BPO) has earned more than Tk 297.9 million through its Electronic Money Transfer Services (EMTS) since its inception in 2010, officials said.
"We have got big response from our EMTS clients and so far we have earned Tk 297.9 million from it," BPO Director General Nayeb Delowar Hossain told the FE.
He said: "Speedy money transfer is the demand of time. Anyone can send money within two or three minutes through this service which manually used to take at least three to five days and maximum seven days."
BPO DG also said: the people are availing EMTS from 2405 post offices across the country and BPO is planning to expand it to the remote areas of the country.
"But due to shortage of manpower in 9886 post offices across the country, it is quite tough to expand our EMTS to remote areas at this moment," he added.
Hamid Rushdi, a former government service holder, came to Dhaka GPO to issue an electronic money order for sending money to his maid.
He said: "My maid is sick and she is now at Sherpur and needs money today. So, I came here to send money within a few minutes. This service is reliable and that's why I use it frequently."
Murad Hossain, a student of Jagannath University, came to receive money through EMTS at Mohammadpur post office.
He said: I have to pay exam fees tomorrow. My elder brother sending money from Narsingdi and I am waiting in the queue to collect the money. It will reach within a few minutes."
"It is an easy and swift system to transfer money. But sometimes I have to stand in a queue for a long time," he said.
Deputy Post Master General Al Mahboob told the FE: "The response of EMTS is tremendous. We are issuing 25,000 to 30,000 money orders on an average in a day across the country."
"It goes up before the Eid-ul-Fitr and Eid-ul-Azha. The number of issuance money order is increasing day by day," he said.
He said: "We have issued 488,987 electronic money orders (EMOs) while it was 210,418 in March 2011. The issued EMOs in March 2012 is around 132 per cent higher than that of March 2011."
"And the net earning of BPO through EMTS has increased 152 per cent in March 2012 than the same month of previous year," he said.
Mr Mahboob said: to avail this service, a money sender has to fill up a form mentioning his or her name, address, mobile no and also the name of recipient.
The money order issuer post office will send the data to the central server, which will in turn send an automatically-generated PIN (Personal Identification Number) through a SMS (Short Message Service) to the mobile phone of the sender.
The sender then will tell or SMS the PIN number to the recipient, as a secret code of the recipient is a must to withdraw money from his or her nearby post office.
The BPO will charge Tk 20 for first Tk 1,000 and Tk 10 for each of the next Tk 1000. Besides, Tk 7 will be charged as electronic service cost. Anyone can money order worth maximum Tk 10,000 at a time.
He said: "We are facing difficulty due to manpower shortage to provide EMTS facility among the customers."
The BPO sources said: the total number of employees is 39,884. Among them 16,863 are departmental and 23,021 are extra departmental employees. In departmental employee 14,151 are working and rest 2712 posts are vacant.
There is no appointment of departmental employees in BPO since March 2010.
BPO DG said: "We have shortage of manpower in BPO. The fresh appointment is needed but as we are incurring losses every year, so the ministry is not agreeing to increase the expenditure."
The BPO sources said, the total earning of BPO (through different services) was Tk 2.36 billion and expenditure was Tk 3.30 billion in 2009-10 fiscal year while the total earning of BPO was Tk 2.17 billion and expenditure was Tk 3.91 billion in 2010-2011.
He said the finance ministry has ordered the BPO to reach to a break-even situation within four years at a meeting in last month.
Mr Hossain said: "We are planning to develop our different services to come to a break-even situation, EMTS is one of them. Our customers will get EMTS facilities at night post offices where they will get this service until 8:00 pm except Fridays."
"We are trying to start EMTS at night post offices from this month in Dhaka and gradually we will increase the number," he said.