Northeast Gets All-Women Post Office

Assam Postal Service initiates first-of-its-kind branch in Guwahati

By Barnali Handique

Employees attend to customers at the new all-women sub-post office in Guwahati.

Guwahati, Jul 4 : The first all-women post office in the Northeast was inaugurated here today.

Situated at Fancy Bazar in Guwahati, the particular sub-post office was buzzing with activity after it was formally inaugurated by chief postmaster general of Assam Postal Circle, T. Murthy.

Bharati Choudhury will head the post office as sub-postmaster.

The staff, all women, were quite busy attending to the customers who came on various business.

While similar post offices exist in other states of the country, this is the first time that the Assam Postal Service has come up with this initiative in the state.

No other northeastern state has an all-women post office yet.

While Fancy Bazar sub-post office has existed for many years now, it was chosen to be converted to an all-women post office.

Busy overseeing the activities at the newly opened post office, Choudhury said, “I have been serving in the postal service for more than 30 years now and before I was posted here I was working at the Pandu sub-post office. But I am very glad to be part of the first all-women post office in the Northeast. This post office has been opened as an initiative to empower women in the postal service.

We will do our best to provide best possible services to all our customers.”

The sub-post office at present has a six women — a sub-postmaster, three postal assistants, a systems manager and an office assistant and is equipped with services like speed post, banking, e-payment, instant money order (iMO) and electronic transmission of money order (eMO).

Apart from this, it has 1,127 saving accounts, 8,700 recurring deposit accounts, 262 monthly income scheme accounts, 29 time deposit accounts and two senior citizens’ savings schemes.

“This sub-post office has been rendering various postal services for many years now. While earlier it constituted both men and women employees, it was selected to be converted into an all-women post office by the authorities recently. It will function as any other post office. In fact, this post office has the highest number of recurring deposit accounts in the city,” said Choudhury.

Most of the customers arriving at the post office were male, though the staff seemed positive that they would soon receive a steady flow of women customers. “Since this post office is an all-women one, let’s hope we receive more female customers in the near future. But it sure feels good to be part of it as this is the first of its kind not just in the state but the entire Northeast region,” the systems manager of the post office, Rinku Suit, said.