Post Offices to Provide Visa Related Services in Remote Areas

 

 India Post has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with M/s VFS Global to provide visa related services for different countries through Post Offices. Memorandum of Understanding between India Post and M/s VFS Global was signed in Delhi on 30 August 2011 in the presence of Secretary, Department of Posts and senior officers from Department of Posts and VFS Global. The MOU sets out broad understandings and intentions of both the parties to provide visa related services at places where they are not currently available.

Post Office counters will be used for fee collections, providing visa applications forms, dissemination of visa information, biometric enrollment and other visa application process related services. India Post and VFS are also planning to cooperate in utilizing India Post’s courier service, Speed Post for movements of passports to VFS offices and concerned embassies, and their delivery back to the applicants. Both the parties will also explore to provide any other service that India Post may want to provide through VFS global network on mutually accepted terms.

M/s VFS Global is in the business of visa application services and is working with 35 governments across the world with over 450 offices in 50 countries. India Post and VFS realize that there are many areas of mutual interest and synergy between India Post and VFS would benefit the public at large.

Currently visa related services are largely available in metros only and the people from smaller cities and rural areas have to travel long distances in order to avail these services. Lack of information is also a major area of concern as this allows unscrupulous elements to cheat unsuspecting and vulnerable people. Engagement of India Post towards provision of visa related services is expected to address this situation to a large extent.

India and Israel to Enhance Tourism Cooperation

India and Israel have decided to enhance cooperation in Tourism Sector. This was decided at a meeting between Mr. Stas Misezhnikov, Tourism Minister of Israel and Union Tourism Minister, Shri Subodh Kant Sahai held here today. Welcoming the visiting dignitary, Shri Sahai said both the countries can explore the possibilities of cooperation in wellness, spiritual and religious tourism. The Israeli Minister said hoteliers of his country are interested to set up hotels in India. He also requested for more flights between India and Israel. Mr. Stas Misezhnikov invited Shri Sahai to visit Israel.

Both the countries have decided to consider exchanging experience in destination management and promotion. Manpower development will be another area of cooperation between India and Israel. Exchange programme for teachers, students, and exchange of information on teaching modules will be considered by the two countries.

Tour operators and travel agents of both the countries will interact with each other in order to promote two-way tourism between India and Israel. The possibilities for promoting package tours in either of the countries will also be explored by the travel trade of two countries.

Tourist traffic from Israel to India was 40581 in 2009, which rose to 43539 in the year 2010. An agreement between India and Israel on cooperation in the field of tourism was signed in New Delhi in May, 1993. Both the countries have rectified this agreement.

India Tourism Office located in Frankfurt is responsible for promoting India as a tourist destination in the Israeli market. India Tourism Office participates in International Mediterranean Tourism Market (IMTM) which is held in Tel Aviv to showcase India’s tourism destinations and products to the tour operators and consumers of Israel. India is known in Israel as an ancient nation with strong cultural traditions and in popular Israeli perception India is an attractive, alternative tourist destination. 

ADB Approved 500 Million Dollar Loan to help India Improve Rail Services

Asian Development Bank, ADB has approved 500 million dollar loan to help India improve rail services. The bank has approved a multi-tranche financing facility for the Railway Sector Investment Program, RSIP. The RSIP is being carried out by the Ministry of Railways and will end by December 2018.

Asian Development Bank loan will be used to develop freight and passenger routes in Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, including the critical Golden Quadrilateral corridor that connects Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai and New Delhi. The loan will be utilised for laying down additional lines and the electrification of hundreds of kilometers of existing track, along with installing new signaling. The loan has a 25-year term, with a grace period of five years. The Centre will provide counterpart finance of over 64 crore US dollars to cover the costs of the total program, estimated at over 110 crore US dollars.

Delhi to have world-class institute on climate change

Delhi will soon have a world-class institute that will impart training to people and chalk out strategies to curb the effects of climate change, CM Sheila Dikshit said. 

Replying to a short duration discussion on environment in New Delhi on Thursday, Dikshit said her government has decided to set up Mahatma Gandhi Institute for Combating Climate Change at Bakauli spread over an area of 18 acres.

"The institute will come up in the campus of Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Integrated Rural Energy Planning and Development which is presently under utilised," she said.

Noting that multi-pronged strategies are needed to control pollution in the city which has 65 lakhs vehicles, she said her government was also looking for a technology to generate energy from the waste.

"The number of vehicles is much more than number of total vehicles in other metro cities together," she said.

Around 8,000 metric tonne garbage is being generated in Delhi on daily basis, she said.

To control air pollution in Delhi, air ambience fund has been created by imposing a fee of Rs 0.25 per litre of diesel sale in Delhi, she added.

For promotion of vehicles operated with clean fuel, the government is giving subsidy to battery operated vehicles from air ambience fund, Dikshit said.