Money order service feels heat of demonetisation

Following the demonetisation measure, there was shortage of liquid cash. College students found it tough to pay money for their semester exams and the only way they could get money other than the ATMs was through money orders. The Postal department had recently introduced an IMO service across India. IMO was a web based service, where people who pay the money at the post offices would be given a secret 16-digit number and they had to pass it on to the recipients who can collect the money from the post offices near them by showing the 16-digit number. But the scheme did not go as expected and there was very poor response as people opted for banking services. 

After the demonetisation drive, banking services were affected badly and people turned to post offices for remittance but the IMO service was not working at the post offices. A customer who went to Madipakkam Post Office at Chennai to send money, narrated an incident at the post office. When she went to send money through IMO she was informed that the mobile phone that was given to them by the post office to send IMO was not charged as it was not used for months. After her inquiry the workers charged the mobile and tried to book an IMO but the attempt failed as the service was not available at that time. 

After several unsuccessful attempts the post office workers booked the money order under Electronic Money Order (EMO).  The money reached the recipient after two days. The customer claimed that as banks were crowded she had opted for post office but even here the service is not working. An official at one of the post offices at Madurai accepted that IMO service had been badly hit and was not working across the state. “But officials at Chennai held a meeting and soon one can hope to see the IMO’s functioning well,” claimed the official.