The island’s postal service may not be turning a profit but management is pulling out all the stops to ensure that the service remains relevant by diversifying its offerings as they struggle to compete with increased competition and a reduction in the inflow of mail to the island.

The competition is from a range of courier services and illegal mail operators, in addition to a melding of new technologies like the cellular phone and the Internet.

Three years ago, 83 million pieces of mail were handled by the Postal Corporation of Jamaica, as compared to approximately 70.7 million pieces in 2003, according to the 2004 Social and Economic Survey compiled by the Planning Institute of Jamaica.

The reduction in the volume of mail has, in part, been attributed fall-out from changes made as a result of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

“This (fall-off in volume) is why the new thinking is that the postal network ought to offer a wider range of services, including over-the-counter commercial service (like) banking and remittances and bill payment and those things,” Postmaster-General Blossom O’Meally-Nelson told the Sunday Observer.

Bill payment services are currently offered in 61 of the island’s post offices, while phone cards are sold in 55 and Moneygram offerings are available in 54, according to the Postal Corporations’ chairman, Lance Hylton. They have also built several thousand private mail/letter boxes.

“I have been chairman for two years. During that time we have had a 185 per cent increase in revenue from the commercial services. We earned a total of $28 million from commercial services last year,” Hylton said, adding that they were also meeting revenue targets for core mail services.

At the same time, there are a number of other commercial services that are expected to complement the earnings generated by the postal service.

These include personalised stamps, which have proven of interest to tourists and mail advertising. There are also plans to introduce the payment of taxes at post offices, though the details of that will have to be hammered out.

“That is something we will have to work out with the Ministry of Finance,” said Hylton. “And we also have to establish the software.

So that’s a more complicated one because you’re handling money and taxes. But we are hopeful that it will come through in time.”

They do not intend to stop there, O’Meally-Nelson said there are also plans for a courier service called Zip Courier.

“I don’t know what is holding it up,” she said. “It should have started in June but definitely July. We had zip mail, which is the 24-hour guarantee mail that was our priority mail. We are putting in a courier service now where we can take parcels and packages and parcels and documents as courier.”

She added: “We are not going to be operating at the same standards. It is not worth our while to try to do a one-day service. So we will have a cheaper next-day service. We are not trying to be a DHL or a FEDEX but we will be trying to get it there safely and in good time.”

Improvements in the postal service’s mail delivery time and a new marketing thrust that targeted the corporate market helped push the volume of mail to 70,803,000 last year, up from 70,735,000 in 2003.

“We have strengthened our management of corporate accounts and we also have done some marketing to the companies and to tell them what services we offer,” the postmaster-general explained.

The most effective improvement, she said, was cutting their delivery time.

“The main thing is the improvement in the delivery time. Once we had standardised our delivery time we were able to recapture some of the corporate market,” said O’Meally-Nelson.

In the Kingston Metropolitan Area, people now get their mail within a day or two after it is delivered while in the rural areas, they receive it within three to four days, she said.

This had been accomplished because workers in the system, according to O’Meally-Nelson, have been made more accountable through the introduction of a monitoring system for mail delivery.

“We introduced an end-to-end measurement, which means that everybody had to account for how much mail they received, how much was processed, how much was delivered, and that data was monitored by a special team of persons,” she said.

“So, we strengthened the whole mail inspection, that is people who go on the road and monitor the post office. And, we also spent benchmarks for sorting.”

Hylton also believes the increase in staff morale has also influenced the performance of the postal service over the last year.

“Four years ago, one couldn’t say the same; but in very trying circumstances there has been significant improvement in the efficiency, the motivation of the staff. You don’t read much in the papers as you used to about complaints and about labour unrest. All of that is gone,” Hylton said.

“People are motivated. They are wearing their uniforms. We are providing services of a variety successfully.”

O’Meally-Nelson agreed.

“I think they like the idea of the new branding and the new image and they want to be a part of it as well,” she said.