Kolkata: In a significant stride towards mechanisation and speedy delivery of services, the West Bengal circle of the Department of Posts has set a target to provide delivery men with 200 e-scooters by March 2020. The e-scooter will be introduced initially in Kolkata, Durgapur and Howrah. "The post offices in the three places will be decentralised and there will be a handful of nodal centres where the consignments will be sorted, packed and dispatched by delivery men in e-scooters," said Gautam Bhattacharya, chief postmaster general, West Bengal. The decision to use e-scooters was mooted after a reasonable growth in e-commerce business for the Department of Posts. "Postmen in small bags can easily carry 40 or 50 odd letters but it is difficult for them to carry a reasonable amount of parcels physically. So, we have already introduced 18 e-scooters for delivery in Central and South Kolkata and will scale it up," said Amitabh Singh, PMG Kolkata. The postal departmental has an agreement with a number of noted e-commerce companies and is responsible for delivering items purchased through the online platform. It may be mentioned that in Kolkata, the postal department presently uses a dozen parcel vans. Six are meant for transporting domestic consignments while another six for international. "We have plans to scale these vehicles to 60 by the end of the ongoing fiscal," Singh said. A senior official of the department said a noted e-commerce company that has a tied up with them now sends 2,400 parcels a day which was 800 last year. "In the Kolkata circle, the number of items has doubled and the revenue has increased by 35 percent in comparison to last year," the official added. As part of modernisation of its services, the West Bengal circle of the department has developed infrastructure for online payment facilities at majority of the post offices across the state. Project Darpan aimed at eliminating the manual system of transactions that followed at the post offices in the state will soon cover all the 9,000 post offices in the circle. The West Bengal circle on Tuesday acknowledged performances of its outstanding employee and also paid homage to them as part of the concluding day of National Postal Week that began from October 9. Twelve outstanding postal employees were conferred with Dak Seva award for their outstanding contribution to the department in the year 2018-19. Eminent author Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay handed over awards to the recipients at a function in the city. The circle also paid homage to three eminent postal employees of yesteryears by releasing a Philatelic Special Cover in presence of Mukhopadhyay. These employees were Dinabandhu Mitra, known for his play Nil Darpan and Amiya Bhusan Majumdar and his literary excellence and noted novelist Shaktipada Rajguru. "Apart from keeping in pace with the technological upgradation, the employees of the postal department should behave cordially with the customers," Mukhopadhyay said.

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