The official website of AIPEU, Gr-C, Odisha highlighting the principle of unity and struggle for the advancement of postal workers
Friday, 22 March 2019
DURATION OF TIME AFTER WHICH THE SPEED POST ARTICLE IS TO BE TREATED AS LOST [DOP ORDER DATED 20.12.2018]
No. 57-07/2016-BD&MD (Pt.)
Government of India
Ministry of Communications
Department of Posts Business
Development & Marketing Directorate
Dak Bhawan, Sansad Marg
New Delhi — 110001
Dated: December A. , 2018
Office_ Memorandum
Subject: Duration of time after which the Speed Post article is to be treated as lost-Regarding.
The matter on the above mentioned subject has been examined in accordance with the time lines fixed for completion of e-search bill cycle vide PG Division letter number 12-27/2016-PG dated 10.10.2018. The maximum period after which the Speed Post article will be treated as lost has been fixed as 150 days from the date of booking of article provided that a complaint is lodged within the period prescribed for lodging the complaint and e-search bill enquiry has been made and concluded as per instructions issued vide ibid letter of PG Division.
2. This would come into force with immediate effect. Circles/Regions are requested to bring this to the notice of all concerned and to take immediate action to implement the above mentioned instructions.
Thursday, 21 March 2019
Wednesday, 20 March 2019
Tuesday, 19 March 2019
Excessive Work Pressure took away another life : Shri Dashru Majhi, SPM, Bandhbahal Colony S O under Sambalpur Division expired today (19.03.2019) in office :
Shri Dashru Majhi, SPM, Bandhbahal Colony S O, a single handed post office under
Sambalpur Division expired today (19.03.2019) morning at 9.30 AM due to cardiac
arrest.
Late
Shri Majhi was very sincere and punctual in attending office. After entering
into office today (19.03.2019) before 9.30 AM, when he started the preliminary
works to make the office functional, he suddenly felt uneasy. Since no other
official was present near him, he rushed to the nearby Postman’s quarters for
help where he became unconscious and suddenly with the help of other staff /
family members while he was being taken to the nearest TRL Hospital, Belpahar,
he breathed his last on the way.
As
reported to this Circle Union the work pressure of Bandhbahal Colony S O is excessively
high and requires to be upgraded to a triple handed office. Being failed to cope
with the undue work pressure on one hand and continuous threatening by the
administration on unachievable POSB / PLI / RPLI / BD targets etc. on the
other, late Shri Majhi had already approached
the Divisional administration to transfer him from that office. But his prayers
had gone futile and ultimately the SPM met the death.
Late
Shri Majhi is left with his wife Tanuja Majhi, one college going son D Majhi (25) and one college going
daughter. Deepika Majhi (20).
Deeply
shocked, the AIPEU, Group-C sincerely condoles the sad and unfortunate demise
of Shri Majhi and prays Lord Jagannath to shower His unending blessings over
the bereaved family members to bear with this irreparable loss.
Let
the divine soul rest in eternal peace.
= B
SAMAL =
Circle
Secretary
On
behalf of the family members of NFPE,
Odisha
Monday, 18 March 2019
Trump's Postal Reform Proposals Met With Criticism From Lawmakers, USPS Management
President Trump’s mandated report on overhauling the U.S. Postal Service drew a tepid response from lawmakers on Tuesday, as the agency’s own leadership rejected many of the key proposals.
One key area of disagreement between the administration’s recommendations and lawmakers’ vision for the agency surrounded the future of collective bargaining at the mailing agency. Trump’s postal task force, which he created through executive order last year, proposed the Postal Service join the rest of government in not allowing its employees to negotiate over pay. Multiple members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee rejected that suggestion, while David Williams, a recently sworn-in member of the agency’s board of governors, said he could think of “no way at all” such an approach would address the most significant drivers of USPS’s precarious financial situation.
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who chairs the committee, was skeptical of that suggestion, noting analysis from the task force that suggested FedEx, which does not have unionized delivery personnel, pays its employees significantly less than the Postal Service. Williams said USPS’ own numbers did not line up with that analysis.
All parties at the hearing demonstrated some overlap over their thinking on postal issues. They agreed USPS is in dire financial straits and in desperate need of reform, but it should remain a government agency. The White House previously pitched privatizing the Postal Service, but Office of Management and Budget Deputy Director for Management Margaret Weichert made no mention of that proposal during her testimony on Tuesday. The task force also declined to recommend privatization.
Still, members of both parties raised concerns about the report. Republican senators speculated that a recommendation to create far fewer constraints for “commercial” mail would disproportionately lead to higher costs for rural constituencies. Members of both parties requested more insight into the analyses that went into the task force’s recommendations and suggested the administration failed to use proper models.
Williams, the USPS board member, accused the task force of doing the bidding of the agency’s competitors through the use of “discredited economic theory.”
“Private shipping companies find value in using cost attribution models to weed out unprofitable customers,” Williams said. “In contrast, we deliver to each American doorway.”
Contrary to private shippers, he said, “the role of a public infrastructure is not to maximize profit, but to maximize value to our American supply chains and to citizens, especially those in rural and underserved urban areas.” Williams added, “High shipping prices steal value from American supply chains, all the way from producers’ assembly lines to the wallets of American citizens.”
Gary Grippo, the Treasury Department’s deputy assistant secretary for public finance and one of the leaders of the postal task force, said without intervention the Postal Service is at risk of being unable to pay its employees within the next three years. He called for a “fundamental new business model” that does not simply shift around the agency’s obligations. He said his group had no interest in closing post offices, ending service to all addresses in the country or charging disparate rates based for rural customers.
He argued, however, that a popular, bipartisan proposal to require all postal retirees to use Medicare as their primary form of health care coverage would shift postal liabilities to taxpayers. Such a move, he said, would break with the mandate that the Postal Service remain self-sufficient. Weichert, too, said the administration was “categorically opposed” to anything that would shift USPS away from self-funding, which she suggested Medicare integration would do.
Grippo also argued there was no rationale for providing a government protection for postal offerings that compete against the private sector, such as package delivery resulting from ecommerce. He said that essential activities, such as person-to-person correspondence or package delivery, as well as pharmaceutical delivery, should continue to receive government-protected lower rates.
The Treasury official and task force member also broke with lawmakers and postal leadership in recommending the Postal Service not take on any new business unrelated to its “core competencies.” Bipartisan postal reform bills have called on the agency to develop its nationwide retail network for new revenue streams.
Weichert, lawmakers from both parties and others testifying at the hearing, such as Robert Taub, chairman of the Postal Regulatory Commission, all called for more details from the task force. They said the administration, in conjunction with Congress, should more clearly define what the universal service obligation to deliver to all addresses means in the 21st century and better explain what services would qualify as essential.
Source : https://www.govexec.com/management/2019/03/trumps-postal-reform-proposals-met-criticism-lawmakers-usps-management/155500/
OMB’s Weichert: USPS employees see pay ‘rise faster’ than other feds
Lawmakers and Trump administration officials remain divided over whether rolling back postal unions’ right to collectively bargain over compensation, as recommended by the White House’s Postal Task Force, would put the agency on firmer financial footing.
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee ranking member Gary Peters (D-Mich.) said at a hearing Tuesday that the proposed reduction in collective bargaining was not “addressing the most fundamental reason why we’re here.”
“Collective bargaining is certainly in my mind an essential tool, and one that works best when labor and management share the same goals,” Peters said. “I am not clear on how removing collective bargaining for compensation would help deliver quality services.”
Margaret Weichert, the deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget, told lawmakers that postal unions’ ability to collectively bargain for compensation marks a “core difference” from unions who represent federal employees on the General Schedule pay scale.
“What you can see empirically is the annual raises and the annual salary considerations under a collective bargaining situation such as what the Postal Service has, they rise faster than some of the other elements in government,” Weichert said.
However, David Williams, one of two current members on the USPS Board of Governors, said rolling back collective bargaining rights wouldn’t address the fundamental problem of the Postal Service’s business model.
“I can think of no way in which it would impact it at all,” Williams said.
According to the Postal Task Force report, the Postal Service has a higher cost-per-employee than private-sector shippers, but Williams disputed those figures.
“We’re working with them to try to overcome very, very different outcomes,” he said. “Something’s wrong with the numbers.”
Career postal employees, Williams said, start out at $17 an hour. By comparison, employees at private-sector competitors receive a $20 starting hourly wage and earn pay raises faster than USPS employees, he said.
Gary Grippo, the Treasury Department’s deputy assistant secretary for public finance, projected the Postal Service would run out of cash to pay its employees and contractors within “two-to-three years” without a significant change to its business model.
“Obviously, this is not a financially viable entity in the long-term or even the short-term. Something has to be done, and we’ve been kicking this can down the road for quite some time,” said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), the committee’s chairman.
To avoid a taxpayer-funded bailout of the Postal Service, Grippo said the task force grounded its recommendations in three principles:
- The Postal Service should “continue as a government entity”
- USPS “requires a fundamentally new business model”
- Postal reform shouldn’t “shift costs or risks” to the taxpayer or the Treasury.
However, Grippo also clarified that the task doesn’t recommend closing post offices, reducing service in rural parts of the United States or charging more for delivery in rural areas.
“The task force strongly believes that any potential solution should not disadvantage rural or remote locations,” Grippo said, calling the Postal Service delivery’s network to every address “a national asset and part of our nation’s critical infrastructure.”
Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) said the task force report fell short of conducting the “data-driven analysis that would be required” to provide sound recommendations to overhaul the USPS business model.
“Unfortunately, this report doesn’t really come close to a real business plan,” Carper said. “This report was long overdue, but it’s not what some of us have hoped it might be — that would be a silver bullet. It’s not that, and this is especially concerning, given the need to stabilize the Postal Service.”
Instead, Carper urged Congress to pass a bill that would give USPS the “breathing room” it would need to reform its business model. Most postal reform bills in recent years would require postal retirees to enroll in Medicare Part B in order to reduce the burden of a 2006 mandate to pre-fund health benefits for future postal retirees.
However, Weichert said the administration opposed the idea, saying that the Postal Service should continue to maintain itself “as a fully funded capability.”
Williams said the USPS pension fund holds $335 billion, but can only invest low-risk, low-reward Treasury bonds which yield about a 2 percent return – a fraction of what an investment in the stock market would yield.
“I don’t think there’s a person in this room that wouldn’t fire a fund manager that said 2 percent was all they could do,” Williams said. “They’d be out the door.”
Robert Taub, the chairman of the Postal Regulatory Commission, said the “single-most” important legislative fix would be for Congress to better define the USPS universal service obligation.
”Only by defining the USO clearly can we begin to design a system that will fund the services required,” Taub said. “It is our nation’s mission statement for the Postal Service, and it needs to be clear.”
Source : https://federalnewsnetwork.com/agency-oversight/2019/03/ombs-weichert-usps-employees-see-pay-rise-faster-than-other-feds/
Sunday, 17 March 2019
Dispensation of conditions of applying for Government Accommodation and Furnishing of 'No Accommodation Certificate' for admissibility of House Rent Allowance.
The conditions of applying for Government Accommodation and furnishing of 'No Accommodation
Certificate by Central Government employees to become eligible for House Rent Allowance, are dispensed with for all places, in respect of General Pool Residential Accommodation (GPRA) controlled
by Directorate of Estates.
India pilots resolutions on Single-use Plastics and Sustainable Nitrogen management at Fourth United Nations Environment Assembly
Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change
India pilots resolutions on Single-use Plastics and Sustainable Nitrogen management at Fourth United Nations Environment Assembly
Posted On: 16 MAR 2019 1:15PM by PIB Delhi
In a significant first, India piloted resolutions on two important global environment issues relating to Single-use Plastics and Sustainable Nitrogen management at the fourth session of United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) which was held in Nairobi from 11th to 15th March 2019.UNEA adopted both the resolutions with consensus. The theme of the UNEA this year was Innovative Solutions for environmental challenges and sustainable production and consumption.
The global nitrogen use efficiency is low, resulting in pollution by reactive nitrogen which threatens human health, eco system services, contributes to climate change and stratospheric ozone depletion. Only a small proportion of the plastics produced globally are recycled with most of it damaging the environment and aquatic bio-diversity. Both these are global challenges and the resolutions piloted by India at the UNEA are vital first steps towards addressing these issues and attracting focus of the global community.
India also hosted, in the High-Level Segment of UNEA, a session on “Global Partnerships: Key to Unlocking Resource Efficiency and Inclusive Green Economies”. The side event was attended by representatives of Member States, Civil Society Organizations, private sector organizations including leading financial institutions. The Side Event had a panel discussion which had High Level diplomatic participation from Germany, Brazil, South Africa and senior management of international financial institutions. The mainstreaming of resource efficiency and use of secondary raw materials through partnerships and action at scale is critical for moving towards green economy.
It emerged that collaborations and action at scale is key to success. The actions should be oriented towards having an inclusive green economy and blended finance will help in implementation whereas public finance should be provided to de-risk private finance in transformational projects.
The Indian delegation also participated in the panel discussion in High Level Segment on “Need for additional commitments of public finance and the ways to maximize mobilization of climate finance”.
It was highlighted that climate finance is an important lever for climate action related to both mitigation and adaption in the developing countries. The contributions to climate finance need to be in consonance with the basic principles of common but differentiated responsibility and respective capabilities (CBDR-RC). Climate finance is more of an obligation of the developed countries, based on their historical emissions. The availability of sufficient, additional and predictable climate finance is a key for action. Importantly, the lack of pledged funds in Green Climate Fund and the potential reliance on private sector has been highlighted by many developing countries. India has been initiating domestic climate actions, both related to climate change mitigation and adaptation, primarily through its own financial resources. There is a sense of urgency for financial support to developing countries, which have not been so responsible for these global environmental concerns.
***
Goa CM Manohar Parrikar, the man who espoused Narendra Modi as PM, passes away
Goa chief minister Manohar Gopalakrishna Prabhu Parrikar died on Sunday (17th March, 2019) in the midst of his fourth term in office.
Parrikar was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer in February 2018 and had been in and out of hospitals in Goa, Mumbai, Delhi and New York since.
Manohar Parrikar was born in Mapusa, Goa on 13th December, 1955 He studied at Loyola High School, Margao. He completed his secondary education in Marathi and went on to graduate in metallurgical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT Bombay) in 1978. He was the first IIT alumnus to serve as MLA of an Indian state. He was awarded the Distinguished Alumnus Award by the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in 2001.
The 63-year-old widower, also former defence minister of India, is survived by two sons and a grandchild.
His death leaves India’s smallest state with a coalition government under considerable strain.
The All India Postal Employees Union Group-C, Odisha Circle pays its respectful homage to the departed soul.
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