Junior minister for labour and social security, Floyd Morris (second left) examines one of the computers handed over Tuesday to Technology Minister Phillip Paulwell (left), who accepted them on behalf of the Postal Corporation of Jamaica. Audrey Marks, the CEO of Paymaster, is at third left and Postmaster-General Blossom O'meally-Nelson at right. (Photo: Bryan Cummings)

THE Postal Corporation of Jamaica on Tuesday took one step closer to becoming computerised when Paymaster Jamaica Limited, a private bill payment agency, handed over 132 computer units to be installed in post office counters across the island.

"It is our wish to enable the ordinary Jamaican to have full and complete access to information communications technology, and we are using this to launch into the wider government project which is about to come on-stream," said commerce, science and technology minister, Phillip Paulwell, who accepted the computers on behalf of the Postal Corporation at a ceremony held at the Central Sorting Office in Kingston.

"We are eventually going to enable Jamaicans from their homes, offices, or from their post offices, to log on and deal directly with the government to pay their taxes, or to do other business with the government. We are committed to this, and in this area the post office will lead the way," Paulwell added.

Once the units have been installed, most of the functions of the post office will be computerised, and Jamaicans will be able to pay bills, and send and receive remittances from their local post office or postal agency.

The most significant improvement, however, will be that beneficiaries of the government's Programme of Advancement Through Health and Education (PATH), who will be able to collect social security benefits, including pensions and food stamps at the post office.

"Not only will the computerisation of the services of the Postal Corporation contribute immensely to improving the customer relations of the post office, but the Ministry of Labour and Social Security is going to be one of the major beneficiaries of this improved service, through a contractual arrangement with the Postal Corporation to make the payment of the benefits to beneficiaries. That will facilitate the improvement of service delivery to the most vulnerable," said junior minister for labour and social security, Floyd Morris.

The Postal Corporation expects that approximately 236,000 PATH registered families will benefit from the new service, which is free of cost to consumers, and that the computerisation will drastically cut the time it takes for benefits to reach the people who need it most and reduce paperwork, transportation time and costs as well as bureaucracy.

"This is the start of a new era in transaction business in Jamaica, it will enable the post office to function as a first rate, first world institution," said chief executive officer of Paymaster, Audrey Marks. Paymaster has been affiliated with the postal service since September 2001, when the company began offering its bill payment services through post offices islandwide.

"As the provider of the electronic transaction services of the post office, eventually we want to streamline and computerise the entire process. We started out with bill payment, but afterwards we realised that there are so many manual processes that we could expand the system and put on other services, so Paymaster will be investing about $25 million to make this happen," Marks added.

According to Paulwell, 160 computers should be installed by the end of March 2003, while the remainder of the island's 320 post offices should receive their computers by March 2004.

"The Liguanea Post Office, which will be opened at the end of March this year is going to signal this new phase of the development of the postal service," he added.

After post offices are computerised, said Paulwell, the ministry would be looking to tackle the computerisation of the more than 400 postal agencies in Jamaica.

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