Tag: Royal Mail

Qatar to host Universal Postal Congress in 2012

Posted by | Aug 7, 2008 | |

Qatar will host the 25th Universal Postal Congress (CPU) in 2012. This was decided by a vote held here yesterday (7th August) on the sidelines of the 24th Universal Postal Congress.
More than 180 participating countries voted for Qatar for efforts being made by its delegation headed by Ali Mohammed Al Ali, Chairman and General Manager of the General Postal Corporation (Q-Post).
Qatar also for the first time joined membership of the CPU Board by election as part of the Asia and Oceania grouping.
The CPU board consists of 41 elected countries as per various regional groupings.
Following the announcement of Qatar winning the bid for hosting the coming congress, Al Ali expressed overwhelming pleasure over this achievement, saying that the Qatar bidding file was a satisfactory one and meets all conditions set by the CPU to host such a universal gathering most important of which are stability, security availability of infrastructure and services including health, transportation and housing, etc.

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Royal Mail – Massive restructuring in North West (UK)

Posted by | Aug 6, 2008 | |

Royal Mail blames falling mail volumes for a massive restructuring of sorting operations in the north-west of England that are likely to see the closure of mail centres in Liverpool, Stockport, Oldham and Bolton.

However, Hellmail has learned that plans had been in the pipeline for some ten years with a proposal to combine sorting operations on a new site at former air-base Burtonwood, close to both Manchester and Liverpool and the cessation of its use of the rail network by 2004, key to plans to make better use of the road network. A planning application for development on the Omega South site at Burtonwood had already been submitted.

Preliminary plans included transferring processing from three mail centres, five outward vouching offices and three centres for bulk mail handling to new mail centres and a new regional distribution centre. A new sorting and distribution centre at Warrington to replace Crewe and Liverpool mail centres, a new Chester mail centre replacing the current Chester mail centre were already penned. It also, at that time, included five outward vouching offices in the Wirral and north Wales, and a new Crewe regional distribution centre replacing Brunswick Dock, Westhoughton and Lostock bulk handling centres.

Putting more mail on to Britain’s roads rather with less reliance on the rail network has clearly altered the network structure as well as access and selecting logical sites for distribution, the subject of much controversy, are rapidly reaching the final decision stage.

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NFSP campaign to save PO card account (UK)

Posted by | Aug 6, 2008 | |

The National Federation of Subpostmasters continues its campaign to highlight the threat to remaining post offices beyond those currently being closed, if the contract for the Post Office card account is lost.

The NFSP points out that the post office network will go into further decline with as many as 3,000 post offices going out of business. The NFSP says that if Post Office Ltd does not need to pay out GBP 27 billion in cash each year through POCA, it will not need to raise large amounts of cash through other services, and the entire business model will unravel.

Post Office Ltd is currently on a mission to reduce massive losses in the post office network by closing 2,500 post offices across the UK. Rural areas have been particularly badly hit where smaller post offices were also the only village shop. Many have already been closed and replaced by outreach services which consist of mobile or limited hours services. The long-term funding of outreach services is the subject of some controversy after the Commons business and enterprise committee raised concerns over the level of funds afforded to the Post Office by Royal Mail.

Business has been lost to post offices in more recent years as many bill payments were transferred to online facilities or contracts put out to tender. Many post offices depend on the POCA and see it as a building block towards a sustainable future for the entire post office network.

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Arab countries agree to start money transfer exchanges

Posted by | Aug 5, 2008 | |

In Geneva to attend the 24th Universal Postal Congress, the postal leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Qatar, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen signed an agreement that will see them start exchanging money transfers electronically.
As with other regional projects, the money transfer service relies on the UPU’s IFS application and international financial network.

Launched by the Arab League and implemented by a regional steering committee chaired by Emirates Post, the project, also supported by the French Post, will allow the postal operators involved to exchange money orders on a multilateral basis from now on.

The new service furthers the UPU’s efforts to improve access to secure and reliable money transfer services through formal channels for rural populations, and especially for migrant workers.

Explains Emirate Post’s Nasser Fathi Sadiq Qaddoumi, Chairman of the steering committee: The multilateral agreement is giving the Arab region – with some countries in Asia and others in Africa – a push to provide better services to migrant workers. For example, more than 80 pct of the United Arab Emirates population of 5.8 million people consists of foreigners, and the situation in other Gulf countries is not much different, says Qaddoumi.

Other Arab countries said they would join the regional network by the end of this year.

A similar regional project is expected to start next week with countries from North Eastern Africa.

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Global monitoring system gets the green light

Posted by | Aug 5, 2008 | |

The UPU will focus its efforts on finalising a new global monitoring system for the quality of service, which is expected to become operational in 2010.
Member countries unanimously adopted a proposal to develop and implement a global monitoring system to evaluate the quality of service for incoming priority letter-post items and the quality of service link to terminal dues (what countries pay each other for processing each other’s incoming international mail). The system will also be used to evaluate how successful postal operators are in improving their quality of service through projects financed by the UPU’s Quality of Service Fund.

Independent external auditors will measure the quality of service by sending priority letter-post test items through the network of participating postal operators. Using RFID technology, the system will measure the time an operator takes to deliver test items from the time these items are handed over. The system will then compare the results with the designated UPU body’s delivery standards for incoming international letter post, which will be compatible with each designated postal operator’s published domestic delivery standards.

A pilot project to evaluate possible RFID technical solutions was conducted with three Gulf-region countries, namely Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, from March to June this year. The UPU has now launched a call for tender to identify the solution that will be used for the global monitoring system.

“The UPU has made great efforts over the years to improve the quality of service, but we must improve across the board,” said Carlos da Silva from Portugal, which fully supported the proposal. “The system will imply a great deal of investment but it is worth it, and I believe everyone should do their bit.”

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