Abdul Latif Abu Ghanem: “Yemen’s postal service has come a long way in meeting public needs.” [Archives:1999/08/Interview]
February 22 1999
The postal service plays a key role in any society. A certain degree of reliability and integrity is required for the proper functioning and growth of society. Though Yemenis have long been a nation of immigrants and travellers, modern postal services in Yemen are a rather recent development.
The first attempts at modern postal services came to Yemen several decades ago through Aden, which at the time was under British colonial rule. Unfortunately, however, the service was limited to the Crown Colony of Aden. Most of the country remained out of reach.
The first signs of widespread postal service came in the 1970s – after the September Revolution finally commanded control over all of the former Yemen Arab Republic, and the former People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen gained its independence. Since then, growth has been rapid.
Today, postal services cover all large and secondary cities. But, it is in the capital city that this sector witnessed enormous growth.
Mr. Abu Ghanem has been an employee of the General Postal Authority since 1976. He received his university degree in 1984. He had served in various capacities until 1995, when he was appointed to his present job.
Ismail Al-Ghabiry of Yemen Times talked to Mr. Abu Ghanem and filed the following excerpts.
Q: What are the most prominent activities in your postal region?
A: Ours is one of the five regions according to which the Postal Authority regulates its work. All five regions offer the ordinary and express postal services along with financial transfers, savings and cashing pensions. Our region’s activities have been enormously successful as reflected in the rising volume of business, level of performance and great confidence on the part of the public.
Q: Let us start with the pension services. How many people use it, and what amount of money are we talking about?
A: We offer pension payment services to around 26,000 persons monthly. The Sanaa Postal Region paid in 1998 about 1.8 billion Yemeni rials to pensioners.
In addition, some YR 600 million rials were transferred between Sanaa and other governorates in the republic in 1998.
Q: What about postal savings?
A: Let me start by saying that the general poverty of the country as reflected in a low per capita GDP does not permit much savings. Besides, those who save do so in traditional ways – not through banks or postal savings schemes.
Having said that, let me indicate that total deposits and withdrawals from postal savings plans has hovered round 400 million rials including deposit and withdrawal transactions. However, the deposits were more than the withdrawals by about 40 million rials. The Postal Authority introduced new services such as advertisements which distribute and publicize services of various companies via brochures and others. It also introduced the service of carrying goods from one governorate to the other in accordance with special contracts. The Authority further extends an express mail service (EMS) which is witnessing speedy growth that reached 100% last year.
Q: Could you brief us on the postal services in the past. How was the postal message sent?
A: There is a Hadith (saying) of Prophet Mohammed on postal services which ordered anyone wishing to send mail to make it clean and clearly addressed.
The word “barid” (post) is an Arabic word which is derived from “burda” or cloak. Messengers carrying the post in the old times used to wear red cloaks to be distinguished from other travelers. Messages to be communicated among people are a very important necessity. Those messengers were usually carefully selected from among those persons known for their honesty and wisdom.
The postman’s mission is to carry people’s letters to cvarious destinations. This should be done with honesty, accuracy and speed. It should be noted that the fees paid in return for those services do not even cover the actual cost. That is why postal services are a government business. There are areas to which delivering a message costs up to 10 times the amount actually paid for the postage stamps.
Q: Countries issue stamps on international occasions and events or special anniversaries. What has the Authority issued in the past year?
A: The Authority issues stamps on national or international events such as human rights, Olympic games, the Yemeni revolution and the World Cup. The Authority has a plan according to which it issues stamps.
Q: Is there a special administration for stamp collectors?
A: There is no such administration yet; but the marketing department is responsible for this matter as it circulates old and new stamps in and out of the country.
Q: Does the Authority have a special museum that depicts development stages of the postal services in Yemen?
A: There is an idea currently being discussed for the establishment of such a museum in future.
Q: How many private post box offices are there in Sanaa and do you plan to expand post box buildings?
A: There are about 18,500 boxes in Sanaa distributed through a number of offices and plans are currently under way to establish a new postal office in Tahreer that would add 800 boxes.
Q: Does the International Postal Union (IPU) present any support in postal fields such as training, rehabilitating, consultations?
A: The IPU is one of the oldest unions in the world and it is the only party that runs postal activities worldwide for its 189 member postal authorities where 6.2 million employees work in 700,000 postal offices. The IPU has supplied Yemen’s postal Authority with a complete computer network. Yemen has enjoyed a good reputation following its reunification in 1990 particularly after introduction of the computer network which enabled subscribers to deposit/withdraw from any office in the country. Pensioners also can cash their money at any postal office in the republic.
Q: How many offices are there in Sanaa?
A: There are 14 postal offices in Sanaa that perform their duty without any complaint and there are a number of postal agencies which extend basic postal services.
Q: There are some complaints that some of the employees are not qualified language-wise and that some messages are opened in the post offices. What is your response to those queries?
A: Dear brother, there are positive and negative aspects to each government institution and our administration does its best to elevate performance of its cadres and eliminate any negative phenomena. We have a special department that follows up on the duties of each employee and there are penalties for any mistakes. We are keen on carrying messages and packages to the given address with all due honesty. However, some addresses are not clearly written and certain letters are sent with only Yemen on it with no mention of any governorate which create great difficulties for us. Yet we do our best in solving that problem.
As far as opening letters and packages are concerned, some are opened due to security reasons as common in any other country and the operation is done in the presence of the custom official and the package recipient. There is a remark that I would like to mention, namely that many express mail letters coming through Frankfurt, Germany arrive torn. We monitored the case and we took one of the shipments from aboard a Lufthanza airplane immediately upon its arrival. There were 16 express mail packages torn, after which we asked the U.S. to send those packages via another route.
Q: Could you tell us about training courses in the Authority?
A: We have two kinds of training, internal and external. Many of the current employees received training outside the country. There is also an internal training center in the Authority.
Q: Is there anything you would like to end the interview with?
A: I would like to thank the Yemen Times for allowing us the opportunity to speak of our work to the Arab and foreign readers.
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