HYDERABAD: Slight delay in receiving your passport, stamped Visa, a court summons or other important documents will cost you a long way.
The situation was faced by residents around Hyderabad as a software upgrade caused sorting hubs of the postal service to undertake extra manual work to process documents.
All Speed Posts and registered posts have a ‘sticker’ on it, resembling a bar code, that is printed after details regarding the package are entered online.
Officials from the post office said that the bar code is crucial for each package as all information pertaining to the package such as weight of the parcel, the address, the cost and the items in it, are entered online.
Jayashree, an official from the Begumpet sorting hub said that the new software installation at the sorting centres that deal with Speed Posts took longer than expected.
“A problem was faced. The tracking details of the package is accessed by residents according to the bar code on the package that is scanned in various centres. Without it, people will not be able to know where their package is. However, it will begin working from this week onwards,” she said.
Postal services that are linked to most special missions of the government suffered due to the delay.
Many complaints were received from residents across the city who were unsure of when their important documents would arrive.
“We had to reassure a lot of worried people that the delay was due to a minor technical glitch and a back log has been created. A few emergency requests from some were made and we tried to cater to the same as soon as possible.
However, it did cause a lot of inconvenience to the people,” an official from Gandhi Nagar post office said.
Meanwhile, R. Srinivas, from the post office at Raj Bhavan, who received a lot of distressed phone calls said that all the back log would be cleared in two days in the upcoming week.
“People who had to receive Speed Posts and Registered Posts suffered. The extra burden fell on sorting hubs. Letters were posted normally but the documents that need confidentiality and security took time to get posted,” he said.
Although a few complainants said that the body should be held answerable to the losses, officials maintained that they informed customers about the supposed delay that could happen.
