Time for MaltaPost to deliver
The time was when a letter posted at seven in the morning used to be delivered at least by four in the afternoon. No longer so. Today, it takes three and sometimes even four or five days for a letter posted in Malta to be delivered. Judging by our own standard, that is, the standard we had been used to for so many years when mail was still handled by a government department, the postal service has deteriorated sharply.
Electronic mail and mobile telecommunication have not killed the postal service. People may not be using the postal service as frequently today as in the time before the coming into regular use of e-mail or SMS messages but there are many who still use mail for official purposes.
The postal service has been showing signs of inefficiency for quite some time now but the way mail was handled over the Christmas period showed serious faults and strengthened the general view that there is need for a serious review of the service. Turning the posts department into a company was meant to make the postal service more, not less, efficient. At least that is what privatisation is expected to deliver. In the case of the posts, it has failed to do this.
Reasons given by the chief executive officer for the fact that Maltapost was “caught on the wrong foot” over the festive period only helped to confirm the company’s bad planning. The CEO, Robert Lake, gave as factors insufficient time to settle down to changes launched in September, a different mailing pattern than that anticipated by the company, late mailing by customers and the late arrival of overseas mail, as well as extended holidays granted to staff.
Mr Lake was quoted as saying that a number of unexpected things “caught us out and as a result we did not deliver the service that we were expected to”. Unexpected things? Was it wise on the part of the company’s management to launch its restructuring programme so close to the company’s busiest business cycle? It does not seem so at all. In fact, it sounds incredible that the company lacked so much foresight at its planning stage.
Another reason was that people posted their cards and business mail later than they had done in previous years. One would have thought that late posting of Christmas mail is not uncommon. Indeed, late posting is a standard complaint made by postal authorities in many countries. Is not a postal company supposed to think of such a possibility much ahead of time?
Even more preposterous was a decision to give the postal workers two consecutive two-day breaks on Christmas and New Year, making a total of eight days without mail during the postal service’s busiest time. This calls into serious question the decision taken by management to grant the leave and, even more so, its approval by the regulator! How can the regulator fail to see the kind of problem the company’s request was going to create when it was so obvious?
Maltapost hardly needed to engage its operations personnel to assess what had worked and what had gone wrong. It could have asked the public directly. The public’s verdict is clear: The postal service has now deteriorated far too much. In the eyes of the public, Maltapost is not delivering on the promises it had made when it was set up.
Investment Minister Austin Gatt was right in taking the stand he did in parliament yesterday. But he must give concrete form to accountability.
