Chaos at post offices as hundreds queue up for UID

The enthusiasm of people to enrol for the unique identification number process at GPO took the staff completely by surprise on Saturday.

The postal department on Friday announced that people could register for “Aadhaar” at 20 post offices in the City. However, the staff seemed unprepared to face the hordes of people in the morning.

Deccan Herald witnessed people waiting since 8:30 am till afternoon in the General Post Office (GPO). They complained about the lack of information and directions from the post office staff. Philip (name changed) said he had rushed to enrol himself as he had a holiday on Saturday. “I am really disgusted at the lack of arrangements,” he complained.

An agitated woman who had come in at 8:30 am, said: “The situation is very chaotic. When VIPs and kin of officials tried to break the queue discipline, an angry crowd interfered and called the police. But police did not make any difference.”

Another woman said the customer care number did not do “us any good. No one knew how to go about it.”

Runs out of forms

Matters were made worse when people, who had approached other post offices, were directed to the GPO. At 1 pm, the post office put up a notice saying people had to get their own enrolment forms as they had run out of them.

Looking at the surge, the staff issued tokens to deal with the confusion. “Only 30 tokens were issued and they are taking a very long time to complete the process, it’s only token 11 now and it’s already 3 pm. They have only one person to deal with the whole process,” said Mala, who had arrived early morning.

The beleaguered officials said the role of the post office was only of verification, the front end work was outsourced to a private company. “Officials of the Life Team Care have to come over and upload the information of each card holder in Kannada and English, take thumb impressions and photos. Each process takes about 15 to 20 minutes. All we do is verify the documents,” the official claimed. The process of registration also includes scanning of iris and fingerprints and clicking a photo.

10 centres

Postmaster (General Business Development), Vasumitra said around 10 centres are operational now. “We can enrol only 40-50 people at each centre in a day. There is nothing we can do to increase that number,” he added.

T S Shivakumar, a resident of R T Nagar, said that he and his wife went to the R T Nagar post office by 10 am. They were greeted by a “No Forms” sign and the clerk at the counter told them to go to the photocopier shop next door to get a copy of the form.