Wednesday, April 18, 2018

Inefficiency of the postal service

A condo sent out notice calling for an AGM. To comply with the regulation, the notice has to be sent out at least 14 days before the AGM. The managing agent sent out the notice on 4 April under "certificate of posting". This means that Sing Post certified that they received the mail on that day.

By 17 April, many of the owners have not received the AGM booklet yet. It seemed that Sing Post did not deliver the mail within the expected time. It is possible that the mail was delivered to the wrong address. However, as a large number of owners were involved, it is more likely that the mail was not delivered.

I read from other posts that Sing Post had relied on part time workers to deliver the mail. Maybe, they outsourced the work to contractors who engaged these part time workers. It is difficult to rely on contractors and part time workers. The control and supervision is not effective.

I read a story that an outsourced worker destroyed all the mails that were assigned to him for delivery. He found it easier to destroy the mail rather than deliver them.

To add to the problem, many flats and apartments have installed measures to deter the insertion of mailers and flyers into the letter boxes. This might have made it more difficult for the postal workers to deliver the mail.

You can ask the questionj - why are we still relying on postal mail, when we have the option of e-mail and other electronic form of communication?

The answer is - the government does noT trust e-mail, due to the posibility of hacking. This has caused the volume of postal mail to increase to an unmanageable level.

The quality and reliability of our postal service has deteriorated significantly over the past years. The privatision of the postal service to a listed company, that operates on a profit driven model, is a bad idea.

The inefficiency of the postal service and the high reliance of postal mail adds to the cost of doing business in Singapore. We are an expensive place to do business. It contributes to our sluggish economic performance.

Singapore is facing a lot of challenges. The government under Lee HL is not aware of these huge problems. We are doomed.

Tan Kin Lian

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