UPU Postal Operations Council (POC) and Council of Administration (CA): off to a flying start

The POC and CA have just completed their first session and laid solid groundwork for the coming four years.

The new UPU Postal Operations Council (POC) and Council of Administration (CA) have just completed their first session and laid solid groundwork for the coming four years.

The POC confirmed the various working groups and their chairmanships. These groups now have until the next POC session in April 2009 to prepare their work plans.

The committees responsible for the letter post, parcels and postal financial services amended a number of UPU regulations concerning those services. Endorsed by the POC and the CA, the new regulations will come into force internationally on 1 January 2010.

Other major decisions included the endorsement by the POC of an ambitious project to develop a global monitoring system for the letter post.

Once it is in place in 2010, this system will enable the UPU to give designated postal operators accurate information on the quality of their inbound international mail service and to set the amounts countries receive under the terminal dues system.

On the parcels side, the member countries decided to introduce more demanding performance objectives in 2010 to improve quality of service. To be eligible for the bonus payments associated with the parcels service, countries will have to exchange a certain percentage of electronic messages with each other and achieve specific goals in terms of customer complaints and inquiries.

The CA, for its part, approved the Union’s Programme and Budget and decided to abandon the practice of zero nominal growth, to which the UPU regular budget had been subjected for eleven years.