Qatar Post plans to regulate courier facility
Qatar’s General Postal Corporation plans to regulate the courier facilty offered by various currency exchange houses to deliver demand drafts and other monetary instruments from Qatar to beneficiaries abroad, Saeed Khalaf Al Muraikhi, director of postal operations at the corporation, said.
Some of these courier companies, he said, were flagrantly violating the local postal laws by offering the service by not obtaining the required clearances from Q-Post and paying the stipulated fees.
Saeed Khalaf said that Q-Post, though aware of this practice, is not taking any action against such courier companies for the time being and prefers to wait for the new postal laws that are expected to be enacted in the coming months.
Enquiries with exchange houses in Doha revealed that they charge between QR7 and QR16 for delivery of a demand draft and other such instruments, particularly to destinations in India.
Demand drafts thus sent usually reach their beneficiary or their banks within 48 hours, depending upon the destination. Incidentally, Telex Transfer services for remittances to India, where cash is available to the recipient within 24 hours, costs about QR15 but the facility is not available to remote and rural parts of the country. Officials at exchange companies disclosed that between 15 to 20 per cent of the remittances to India are usually sent by courier service.
Interestingly, courier companies are not the only ones violating local laws in the remittance business, it was discovered: Exchange houses who facilitate sending demand drafts through them, are also not above board, as the senior official of a leading company that specialises in issuing demand drafts to India admitted. According to him, exchange houses are not allowed to offer courier services from their premises without the explicit consent from the Qatar Central Bank (QCB), which regulates their business.
This official explained that exchange houses were forced to offer the courier service as a value addition, to attract more customers. Courier companies operating through exchange houses charged slightly more than the cost of a registered letter sent through Q-Post but promised quicker delivery, he pointed out.
“We get a bulk of our customers on Friday and since post offices are closed, they send their drafts through couriers. By doing so, they also save the bother and costs of taking a taxi to a post office,” he noted.
Muzammil Hanif, vice president at Alfardan Exchange Co said that his firm was unaware of any moves to regulate the courier facilities offered through exchange houses and said, they would cease the service if required under local laws. “We are a leading Qatari business house and hence it is our duty to comply with the local regulations,” he asserted.
