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Falling service of the postal department
Allegations raised against the postal department include delayed delivery of parcels as well as items missing from those parcels. Munima Sultana writes
12/26/2004
YOU might be eagerly waiting for a document sent by parcel. It may be an appointment letter or a visa document or an academic certificate on which depends your future plan of work. But when you receive this document after a long delay or half of the contents of the parcel is pilfered, it does not only irritate you, it may also mess up your future.
Bangladesh Postal Department has a big responsibility to serve its clients to earn their confidence. But doing it half-heartedly or even delivering the parcels with stolen contents, the department is losing confidence of its valuable clients. But this is a service-oriented agency of the government that fails to do its task properly. It is neither able to do its job from the point of view of service, nor from that of commerce.
Bangladesh Postal Department is run under the century-old Post Office Act. It is learnt that the department incurs a loss or deficit, whatever it is called, to the tune of Tk 1,000 million every year on average. For its nature as a service organisation, it sells tickets and services at a low cost so that all categories of people including rural people can avail themselves of its services. The department, at present, runs a number of services by itself and through agencies. So when email is thought to be a threat to the department, it gets more avenues to work for people, which are supposed to reduce the loss gap.
But the reality is different. The services of the Postal Department incur loss for many reasons. It introduced e-Post but lately. The first phone booths were introduced on the post offices premises, but those went out of order within a short time. The service called "Express Parcel Post" (EPP), which facilitates delivery of heavy goods like furniture, is still unknown to the clients. Express Mail Service (EMS) is internationally recognised as a low paid service and is supposed to reach mails or parcels within three days. But in our case, it takes at least a week or more to reach the recipient depending on the distance of the countries of destination.
As for the allegations against missing parcels and delayed arrival, the department is to blame. Corruption and irregularities by a section of its staff is responsible for the loss of the confidence of the people. Many postal staff earn extra money in the name of services. For example, a business run by the employees earn a handsome amount in the name of packing parcels. The employees often do not put seal on the stamps in order to resell those between the process of mail's posting and delivery. But confidence building and providing standard service are the prerequisites of a service organisation, which the department has failed to achieve.
Once the department had core activities like collection, dispatch and delivery of mails. The sight of collecting mails from post boxes is now rare. Now people can hardly find post boxes in the capital city or in other important cities. Even if the postmen are found doing the job, it is not done strictly according to the rules and on a regular basis. So, people now go directly to the post office to drop their mails. This service has lost people's confidence due to the unacceptable role of the staffs of the postal department.
But the courier services are becoming popular and more reliable as they maintain strict rules and ensure safe delivery, though they charge at a higher rate than the postal department run by the government. But people now go for this service just to be relieved from the hazard of missing parcels or mails as well as delay. But this private sector's service runs contrary to the Postal Act 1898. They do not really have the right to do postal business. They are doing the business with trade license only and the government allows it for the sake of free market economy. But the question is: why is the government unconcerned about these organisations who earn tens of millions of taka but are reluctant to make the department profitable? At least the postal department can become profitable through improving the quality of its services.
The government policy on the department is another cause for the fall of quality. They encourage the use of bank for exchange of money, give support to the private and foreign courier services to do business. But when it comes to the issue of improving the departmental service for the poor or majority people, they are not serious. The government's positive stand on this department would help reduce the loss gap of the department and improve the service, which is the demand of the people. There is no reason to fear that department is going to be shut down as it still does the important task of posting documents or conducting merchandise business. There are a number of other services like savings schemes, insurance scheme, SB account, Fixed Deposit Account, fees or tax collection of other government agencies, selling of phone cards to improve the earning of the departments.
In the present world, postal departments of different countries are profitable organisations. But the profit depends on the countries' per capita income. As many people still earn less than a dollar a day, the department cannot increase the stamp prices or fees of different services. But many services are not usually used by the poor section of people. For example, Value Payable Service, Guaranteed Express Post (GEP) or EPP are hardly used by poor people but these services have a big gap in contrast to the rate charged by private companies. The GEP service, which is bound to deliver a mail within 24 hours, is done at the rate of Tk 10. Although the department is not supposed to give any deposit to the government, as it is a service organisation, it has to pay the government its earnings. But for its commercial activities, the department is bound to pay the government. Only the solution to all these problems can improve the income of the department and then people can expect a better service from it.
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