Yemen Post Office to Introduce New Services [Archives:1998/49/Business & Economy]
December 7 1998
Yemen Times interviewed Mr. Al-Kabous. excerpts.
Q: What are the services offered by your corporation?
A: Postal services were present in Yemen for a long time. Governments continued to extend and cater for that service in view of the people’s need to maintain contacts with others whether within the country or abroad.
With the reunification of Yemen on May 22, 1990, postal services were granted greater importance and a new modern law was passed by which the General Post and Postal Savings Corporation was established. It was granted administrative and financial independence which led to speedy development of all its services, provided through 206 offices and 45 postal agencies in various governorates.
Post offices and sub-offices offer different services; delivering letters and packages, express mail, advertising post, in addition to financial services such as postal savings and money remittances. They further pay pensions to former military and civilian employees, and receive payment for water, electricity and telephone bills.
The Corporation, in order to improve its services, took the following steps:
1- Reviewing the post’s internal and external routes, closely monitoring and noting the period which a letter takes until it reaches its destination;
2- Sending vehicles to all governorates on daily basis along with making use of domestic flights.
3- Expanding the computer network which links post offices, thus providing speed and accuracy in dealings among those offices including deposit/withdraw transactions in postal savings in addition to cashing pensions and sending daily accounts to the central administration;
4- Subscribing in the international system of sending and pursuing data which enables the Corporation to follow up postal materials until their final destination via a computer network that was financed by the International Postal Union (IPU) and the U.N. Development Program (UNDP);
5- Organizing qualitative training courses for its cadres at the Corporation’s training center and sending employees to attend courses organized by the IPU or other countries according to bilateral cooperation agreements.
Q: What is the volume of mail flowing in and out of Yemen, as delivered by your Corporation?
A: According to 1997 statistics, letters and printed material from Yemen to the outside world numbered 1,827,696 letters. A total of 3,379,683 letters came in. Packages from various parts of the world to Yemen reached 6,325 parcels, and the other way round the packages reached 2,527 parcels. While messages and printed material circulating within the country totaled 691,979 items.
Q: Does the Corporation provide fax services?
A: The fax service urges us to improve our own and benefit from it at the same time. Such modern means should be made use of in the postal services. The mail service, keeping up with telecommunication developments, had made use of boats, ships, planes and wireless contacts to carry its services. This made the postal service one of the most important developmental factors worldwide.
Q: Has your Express Mail suffered as a result of competition by private courier service?
A: The Corporation’s Express Mail Service (EMS) offers a low-price package for its local and international services which won us a place in that competitive market. We were encouraged to introduce the Electronic Mail for internal and external services.
The EMS was introduced on May 15, 1990 and kept on expanding since then to meet the market’s needs. We offer top speed and guarantees for the transfer of documents, samples and packages up to 30 kilograms for each article.
That service is currently feasible with 73 countries in various continents. That number is expected to increase by 1999. EMS is offered to the public, institutions, companies, ministries, etc., on demand or according to contracts. The spread of our offices in a big number of governorates and towns distinguishes us from the private companies that offer similar services.
A: We interact with national and international occasions and receive advice from the IPU in this regard. Hence, we decided to issue three stamps to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These stamps were printed in France. They are in three pricing categories – 15, 35, 100 Riyals in addition to a souvenir postal card with the same categories.
Q: What are your future plans and projects?
A: Our future projects are numerous and need huge investments to attain the desired goals, yet we set our priorities in accordance with available resources. However, we aim to expand postal services to include deprived areas, and provide advanced services in existing offices along with improving their performance. Soon computers will be installed in a number of postal centers to expand the E-mail service, while new offices will be inaugurated.
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