Jamaica Post to decentralise operations
The Jamaica Postal Corporation (PostCorp) is planning to decentralise the way it sorts and delivers most of the island’s mail, from one core centre on South Camp Road in Kingston to four centres across the island.
The PostCorp, which will be working along with the Universal Postal Union (UPU), said the decentralisation of the service should be completed by the end of the year.
“The PostCorp is looking at the geography of the island, breaking up the island into four zones, in order to introduce hubs,” said Michael Gentles ,deputy postmaster general. Each hub, he added, would be responsible for a zone.
Currently most of the nation’s mail, regardless of parish, comes into Kingston and then leaves for its destination. “It means that mail in Montego Bay going to say St Elizabeth comes to Kingston and then to St Elizabeth,” said Gentles.
The decentralisation, Gentles said, would increase the speed at which mail is delivered by removing build-ups, while reducing transportation costs, which he said was approximately USD 112 million last year.
At the same time, the PostCorp said the retraining of staff, installation of new machinery, improving staff morale and “brightening up the work environment”, were among other measures being considered to improve the efficiency of the postal service.
“If it took five days to receive mail it would take four and if it took four days it would take three,” said Herbert Niles, the UPU’s regional advisor for the Caribbean.
The UPU, an agency of the United Nations, assists in the modernisation of postal services worldwide to effectively compete against private courier services, which are considered more efficient.
PostCorp lost USD 300 million last year, and the technology minister, Philip Paulwell, last week set a 2006 target for the postal service to break even. But this is Paulwell’s second attempt at trying to make the postal service profitable. In 1999, he first announced that by February 2001 PostCorp would earn USD 2 billion in revenues and turn a profit. However, the service has continued to operate at a loss.
