Post Office buckling under UID pressure

OVERWHELMED BY THE LARGE VOLUME OF U.I.Ds, DELIVERY HAPHAZARD
ANAND OBEROI
GANGTOK, 12 July: While the second round of enrolment for the Unique Identification Number [UID], or Aadhaar Cards as they are popularly know, is all set to begin from August, many of the citizens of the state are still to be delivered their Aadhar cards from the first round. While many have got their Aadhaar cards, many more are still waiting and it is feared that a good number of the cards could even be misplaced or lost.
There is general confusion, both among the public as well as the concerned agencies, as to how and where the Aadhaar cards are to be delivered. There had been tremendous publicity and awareness raised when the scheme had been announced and undertaken but it seems that the agency responsible for distribution of the UID cards, the Post Office, seems to be buckling under the pressure.
The number of Aadhaar cards is informed to have simply overwhelmed post offices in the state which, it is informed and known as well, are not equipped to handle such thousands of postal orders and tasks. But that is not the only problem. A bigger complication arises because the addresses in the Aadhar Cards are not as detailed as should be for delivery at home. In many cases, only the general locality of the person is mentioned, without the address details required to deliver the cards door to door.
As a result, it is not surprising that the post office, during the last check, had almost 1.5 lakh Aadhaar cards still awaiting delivery. And now it is learnt that the post office may not be able to fulfill its obligation of distributing the UID cards to each and every citizen in the state.
Officials here stated that the help of the municipal councilors and panchayats has been sought for card distribution among the public of their respective areas. However, this is not yet clear as the Deputy Mayor and the GMC Commissioner have denied any involvement in the distribution of the cards and have stated that the process of distribution of UID cards was not in their jurisdiction. As a result, the public are not sure whom to approach for their cards.
As per the scheme of things, the central government is informed to have disbursed necessary funds to the post office here for the distribution of the cards to the public. The Department of Posts has been entrusted the distribution of Unique Identification Cards by DESME, however, the distribution process undertaken by different post offices is unsatisfactory and complaints related to delays and ‘unprofessionalism’ in the manner in which the general public is being handed out the cards have come to light.
Just a week back, the Tadong post office had to call in cops from the nearby out post to control a mob of hundreds of people who had been reportedly told by the post men of their locality to come to the post office at 3 PM that evening to collect their cards since many card holders had still not received the same.
Locals say that while their entire families had taken photos standing in long queues, only one or two members have received the cards and this was a problem that most of them were facing. “When we enquired why only one member of my family was given the card the postman said that he had brought only the card of the person that he recognized and told us to come to the post office and when we reached there, chaos broke out,” states a local resident.
This will obviously take place as there are thousands of people in any given locality and the post offices, as is known, cannot handle such a large volume postal traffic.
However, officials at the post office inform that DESME and the head post office recently held a meeting and now the respective panchayats and councilors of the different wards and areas were taking the cards in bulk to be distributed by them since they would know the people in their localities better.
Earlier, the postmen were distributing the cards to people whom they knew or which had proper addresses and as officials inform addresses in some of the cards are not clear.
Similarly, it is informed that there are many children with similar names enrolled for the UID cards, which is also emerging as a problem.