The telecom and internet have pillaged the DPS´s colossal network--five regional head offices, 70 district post offices, and thousands of post offices--spread across the country of what used to be its monopoly service area until a few decades ago: flow of official and personal information both within and outside the country. [break]
The hardest hit has been the snail mail service that used to justify the nearly 17,000 staffers either fully or partially employed by DPS. In 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008, the country´s postal network handled 78,552,103, 77,291,655, 73,283,010, and 41,426,565 inland mails respectively.
“Post is a labor-intensive job,” said Baburam Pandey, chief post master at the General Post Office (GPO) in Sundhara, justifying the massive staffing. Foreign dispatch and receipts of mails have also steadily declined in this period. But DPS has tried to improvise to stay relevant and justify the Rs 1.7 billion budget it was allocated by the Finance Ministry for this fiscal year.
And that improvisation has been the addition and expansion of the Express Mail Service (EMS), more commonly known as courier service, and remittance service.
Pandey said EMS has attracted a lot of customers as it is cheaper by one-third compared to what is being charged by the services provided by private couriers like FedEx, DHL and TNT Express. In 2008, EMS garnered over Rs 26 million revenue to the DPS, second only to the revenue generation from sales of postage stamps and philatelic items. The GPO has EMS agreements with 38 countries across the globe. “We are trying to make EMS more commercial, but we cannot raise the service charges significantly,” Pandey said.
The country´s postal service still charges Rs 2 per letter weighing up to 20 grams from one place to other anywhere in the country, a charge set over a decade ago.
But EMS alone cannot sustain the DPS that has always been a loss-making government enterprise, said Lal Prasad Acharya, director general of DPS. "It was never thought of as a commercial enterprise," he added. Under financial pressure, the GPO has forayed into areas not generally associated with postal service. The GPO has entered into an agreement with Western Union Money Transfer, allowing the latter to use its nation-wide network in exchange of marginal commissions. The GPO also offers EDV services, filling up forms and sending them to their destination after levying a certain charge. While remittance, tele-center, and e-post services has been latest addition, parcel service has existed for decades.
Established in 1878, postal service is one of the oldest service-oriented organizations set up by Nepal government. After the dawn of democracy in 1951, efforts were made to expand the service. At that point in history, there were just 124 post offices in the country. Today, there are 3,996 post offices that can accommodate 9,952 full-time staff (of which one-third remains vacant) and 10,777 additional part-time workforce.
More than a century after its establishment, DPS is having a hard time devising ways to justify its budget of over a billion rupees against an annual revenue generation of not more than Rs 200 million.
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